Why We Stand With Ukraine and Against Putin’s Tyranny

Somehow standing in solidarity with an emerging democratic nation, one that just cast off the shackles of its oppressive and kleptocratic puppet regime, against unprovoked military invasion by the very murderous dictator who oppressed them and who keeps his own people powerless, poor, and violently oppressed has become a partisan issue!

Standing with democratic societies against unfree ones is simply and essentially American. Our nation was born from the proposition that it is an inherent right of all people to be free, to control our own destinies through the mutual pledge of our sacred honor to come together and struggle to build a better, more just, society than the ancien régime of autocratic rule using the greatest tool of human freedom: democracy.

The people of Ukraine bravely stood up to an autocrat supported by the might of Putin’s criminal cartel using nothing but their love of each other, their nation, and their hope – and they won. They cast off their oppressor and began to build a democratic society based on OUR values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.

Putin has attacked them because he cannot, and will not, tolerate that dream to grow in Ukraine. Indeed, it is an existential threat to him. Not for the reasons and excuses he has broadcast to the world – every word he ever says is a calculated lie – but because he must not let the dream of freedom and self-determination grow in his own nation. THAT is why Putin decided to invade Ukraine – to crush the hope of Ukrainians for freedom and democracy. And to thereby crush any hope of the Russian people to pursue that same dream.

Putin knows that Ukraine truly is the birthplace of the Russian nation. There are deep historical, cultural, religious, linguistic, and family ties between the nations of Ukraine and Russia. If humanity’s most audacious dream of democratic self-rule is allowed to flower and prosper in Ukraine, it must be able to grow in Russian soil as well.

That is what terrifies Putin. A free Russian nation. Free of him. Free of the boot of authoritarian oppression. Free of his corrupt regime of murder and theft.

So that’s why we stand with Ukraine and against the dictator Putin. That is why every American who believes in humanity’s sweetest dream of freedom and self-determination, using the greatest tool for the liberation of mankind yet invented -democracy – should stand with them, too.

If some Republicans decide they no longer share that most-American ideal of democracy, then fuck them. Seriously. Fuck them. They are discarding that which MAKES us Americans – a shared belief in building a better future for ourselves and all of humanity together as free men and women with liberty and justice for all.

In Solidarity,

Mike Bryan