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To the Editor:

In the last weeks, there have been articles feigning support for the Ukraine, people have stood temporary vigil just long enough to have a picture taken for the paper and there have been arguments in public over the politics of supporting the Ukraine with actual, you know, support.

If you’re a Ukrainian, looking at your kid’s dead body and your demolished home, do you really think a couple of blue and yellow nightlights in Farmville, and a few articles in the paper will help? And, as a side note, Mr. Vincent, things don’t “feel like authoritarianism,” things are or are not authoritarian. The extreme wings of both parties are the epitome of authoritarian, you’re going to have to drop the political masking and insult both or remain silent. Digressing.

People around the world need to wake up and smell the history. The world today is eerily similar to the 30s; dictators and militaristic, authoritarian nationalism, global depression and inflation, war in Europe and an indifferent United States. We’re watching. And we’ve been watching for some time now.

We watched as President Trump blackmailed the Ukraine to try, and ultimately fail, to win an election two years ago. We watched when Russia invaded the Crimea in 2014 just because the Ukraine became an official democracy and announced their intentions to join NATO. And we watched in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia.

It is perfectly clear that the hundreds of billions of dollars the US and other NATO countries have spent on NATO and anti-Russian military buildup has been a complete waste. The Ukrainians are probably wondering why all that money was spent to build up forces which would never be used and I know I sure am. What good is a military if, when a dictator is invading another country, you’re not going to use it to avoid a much greater disaster, just like the West should have done in 1938?

The world has forgotten the lessons of 1938 and ’39, dictators must not be allowed to build up their military with the clear goal of destroying the world. Over 50 million people died in WWII. 50 million. That’s unfathomable. But not to Russia. They lost over 30 million alone. They are hard. We have become soft. Putin may have underestimated the Ukraine but he predicted the reaction by the rest of the world perfectly, hand-wringing and meaningless sanctions, false outrage and political squabbling amongst the reactionaries.

The UN must expel Russia for this war and those before it, the United States and NATO must declare war on Russia and immediately send troops to defeat Putin. But that will never happen. Democracies are weak and crumbling.

Tom Noehren

Farmville