Frontline's 20 Days in Mariupol

Just what I needed, after daily servings of the carnage in Gazza, a documentary of children dying and mothers crying from the Ukraine: "20 Days in Mariupol."

Can I bear to watch yet another 90 minutes of unremitting horror show? 

But, as President Zelensky has said, as long as people can see the horror, they will do something to try to help; when Ukraine recedes behind the news from Gazza, help to Ukraine dries up.

Republicans in Congress from Rand Paul to Marjorie Taylor Green to Lauren Boebert are trying to "America First" the country into abandoning Ukraine. It's not even a new story: Charles Lindbergh and a whole bund of right wing American Nazis tried to keep America from coming to the aide of embattled Britain, and would have gladly come to terms with Adolph Hitler and his control of Europe from the Rhine to the North Atlantic. 

Now, it's Vladimir Putin and his murderous hordes launched against Ukraine.

A democracy which had the misfortune of having a border with Russia is simply being annihilated by a dictator. The NATO countries seem aware of the threat posed. They suspect once Mr. Putin has crushed Ukraine, like Hitler, he will look for another country to accuse of provoking him into a war he cannot avoid.

Democracies barely work, so the attraction of the dictator, the strongman who claims to be essential to control, law and order and harmony is understandable. Italy has put a immigrant hating woman, Georgia Meloni, in power. Hungary voted in Viktor Orban, another White power autocrat and even the Netherlands just voted in Geert Wilders, who is a vehement anti Muslim and right wing champion.

So we are not the only ones dealing with Confederate Congressmen who speak ominously of Ghost Buses in the sky coming to seize your government from you, of Marjorie Taylor Green who says this is, always was and always should be a White Christian nation and Lauren Boebert who says the Constitution never mentions separation of church and state and the right of individual citizens to own howitzers is not only guaranteed by the 2nd amendment but God given.

Today, waiting for the light to turn green at Lafayette and Exeter Road, I saw a plaid shirt guy in his mega pickup truck, flying a big Trump flag take the right hand turn and head toward Exeter, no doubt in pursuit of ghost buses and planning to execute the plan Congressman Clay Higgins was talking about when he told the head of the FBI, we are coming for you; your day will come.

Standing against these middle aged men and young women are the quiet members of the Hampton Dems club--mostly men past retirement age and a spectrum of women in their middle years. 

Hampton is not Mariupol. 

Yet.