[Sundaycommunity] Fwd: An article from the Atlantic

Sun Mar 2 12:17:07 PST 2025

THANKS Pail!
Incredible!
Zelensky was a bullied victim!

Sharon

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 6:23 PM Paul M via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> A sad day in Washington. I hate to see bullies win. Trump, Vance and Musk
> are high school bullies. They strut, shout, laugh and put down those who
> are already vulnerable.
>
> I am worried for Canada with Trump’s continuous joke (not joke) of 51st
> state and his demeaning of Trudeau by calling him a “governor.” Not to
> mention the on again off again tariff threats.
>
> I am worried for Russia’s smaller neighbours - Lithuania, Latvia and
> Estonia. They are vulnerable and if Putin is given the green light by Trump
> for takeover of Ukraine , then he may grab the Baltic states too.
>
> I am worried for Taiwan on the other side of the world. President Xi in
> China is watching carefully events in the West. If powerful countries like
> USA don’t give a damn about vulnerable countries, China may take that as a
> signal to invade Taiwan knowing there will be few consequences. I know
> people in Taiwan and we have a long Spiritan presence there.
>
> The UN is a failed, toothless tiger.
>
> NATO is failing apart.
>
> We are in a world order where people worship at the altars of  might &
> money.  It is not necessarily new in human history, but now it is brazen
> and applauded.
>
> Yes, yesterday in the Oval Office, we witnessed arrogant high school
> bullies but the difference is, ….these bullies have nuclear arms.
>
> Jesus wept!
>
> Fr. Paul
>
>
>
>
> Sent from Gmail Mobile
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 4:20 PM Catherine Walther via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
>> From my American sister-in-law. Excellent article. Catherine
>>
>> This article was published today. It's about the meeting with zelensky
>> and Trump.
>>
>> Friday, February 28, 2025
>>
>> Tom Nichols
>> Staff writer
>> Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American
>> diplomacy.
>>
>>
>>
>> Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which
>> President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian
>> President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the
>> spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an
>> enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not
>> obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of
>> the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon
>> make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation
>> fighting for its very existence.
>>
>> Trump’s advisers have already declared the meeting a win for “putting
>> America first,” and his apologists will likely spin and rationalize this
>> shameful moment as just a heated conversation—the kind of thing that in
>> Washington-speak used to be called a “frank and candid exchange.” But this
>> meeting reeked of a planned attack, with Trump unloading Russian talking
>> points on Zelensky (such as blaming Ukraine for risking global war), all of
>> it designed to humiliate the Ukrainian leader on national television and
>> give Trump the pretext to do what he has indicated repeatedly he wants to
>> do: side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the war to an end
>> on Russia’s terms. Trump is now reportedly considering the immediate end of
>> all military aid to Ukraine because of Zelensky’s supposed intransigence
>> during the meeting.
>>
>> Vance’s presence at the White House also suggests that the meeting was a
>> setup. Vance is usually an invisible backbencher in this administration,
>> with few duties other than some occasional trolling of Trump’s critics.
>> (The actual business of furthering Trump’s policies is apparently now Elon
>> Musk’s job.) This time, however, he was brought in to troll not other
>> Americans, but a foreign leader. Marco Rubio—in theory, America’s top
>> diplomat—was also there, but he sat glumly and silently while Vance
>> pontificated like an obnoxious graduate student.
>>
>> Zelensky objected, as he should have, when the vice president castigated
>> the Ukrainian president for not showing enough personal gratitude to Trump.
>> And then in a moment of immense hypocrisy, Vance told Zelensky that it was
>> “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate
>> this in front of the American media.” But baiting Zelensky into fighting in
>> front of the media was likely the plan all along, and Trump and Vance were
>> soon both yelling at Zelensky. (“This is going to be great television,”
>> Trump said during the meeting.) The president at times sounded like a Mafia
>> boss—“You don’t have the cards”; “you’re buried there”—but in the end, he
>> sounded like no one so much as Putin himself as he hollered about “gambling
>> with World War III,” as if starting the biggest war in Europe in nearly a
>> century was Zelensky’s idea.
>>
>> After the meeting, Trump dismissed the Ukrainian leader and then issued a
>> statement that could only have pleased Moscow:
>>
>> I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if
>> America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big
>> advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He
>> disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He
>> can come back when he is ready for Peace.
>>
>> Trump might as well have dictated this post on Truth Social before the
>> meeting, because Zelensky didn’t stand a chance of having an actual
>> discussion at the White House. When he showed Trump pictures of brutalized
>> Ukrainian soldiers, Trump shrugged. “That’s tough stuff,” he muttered.
>> Perhaps someone told Zelensky that Trump doesn’t read much, and reacts to
>> images, but Trump, uncharacteristically, seems to have been determined to
>> stay on message and pick a fight.
>>
>> Vance, for his part, fully inhabited the role of a smarmy talk-show
>> sidekick, jumping in to make sure the star got the support he needed while
>> slamming one of the guests. The vice president is an unserious man who
>> tries to insert himself into serious moments, but this time the stakes were
>> much higher than the usual dustups with the media or congressional
>> Democrats. He chuckled as Brian Glenn, a journalist from the right-wing
>> channel Real America’s Voice who is reportedly dating Representative
>> Marjorie Taylor Greene, asked Zelensky the tough and incisive question of
>> why he had not worn a suit in the Oval Office. (Perhaps he’ll ask Musk why
>> he wore a hat and T-shirt to a Cabinet meeting, but I doubt it.)
>>
>> The sheer rudeness shown to a foreign guest and friend of the United
>> States was (to use a word) deplorable as a matter of manners and grace, but
>> worse, Trump and Vance acted like a couple of online Kremlin sock puppets
>> instead of American leaders. They pushed talking points that they either
>> knew or should have known were wrong. Even if Zelensky were as fluent and
>> capable in English as Winston Churchill, he would never have been able to
>> rebut the flood of falsehoods. No, the U.S. has not given Ukraine $350
>> billion; yes, Zelensky has repeatedly expressed his thanks to America and
>> to Trump; no, Zelensky was not attacking the administration. The Ukrainian
>> leader did his best to stand up to the bullying, but Trump and Vance were
>> playing to the cameras and the MAGA gallery at home.
>>
>> Vance showed how dedicated he was to point-scoring rather than policy
>> making with an observation so shallow that he was lucky that Zelensky was
>> too off-balance to call him out for it. To emphasize Ukraine’s perilous
>> situation, Vance noted that Zelensky was sending conscripts to the front
>> lines, as if this was an unprecedented policy that only the most desperate
>> regime would dare enact. Zelensky said that all nations at war have
>> problems, but he might have pointed out to Vance that Ukraine is fighting
>> for its very existence, while the United States has dragged conscripts to
>> places far from home—including Korea and Vietnam—to fight against troops
>> supported by the Kremlin.
>>
>> Today’s meeting and America’s shameful vote in the United Nations on
>> Monday confirmed that the United States is now aligned with Russia and
>> against Ukraine, Europe, and most of the planet. I felt physically sick
>> watching the president of the United States yell at a brave ally,
>> fulminating in the Oval Office as if he were an addled old man shaking his
>> fist at a television. Zelensky has endured tragedies, and risked his life,
>> in ways that men such as Trump and Vance cannot imagine. (Vance served as a
>> public-relations officer in the most powerful military in the world; he has
>> never had to huddle in a bunker during a Russian bombardment.) I am ashamed
>> for my nation; even if Congress acts to support and aid Ukraine, it cannot
>> restore the American honor lost today.
>>
>> But no matter how disgusted anyone might be at Trump and Vance’s
>> behavior, the strategic reality is that this meeting is a catastrophe for
>> the United States and the free world. America’s alliances are now in
>> danger, and should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything
>> America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago. The
>> entire international order of peace and security is now in danger, as
>> Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look
>> forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial
>> for their crimes. (Shortly after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White
>> House, Putin’s homunculus, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, posted
>> on X: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”)
>>
>> Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the
>> grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster
>> that every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future
>> of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of
>> Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along
>> with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with
>> confidence and think: one of us.
>> Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>
>> ________________________________________
>>
>> Sundaycommunity mailing list
>> To send message: sundaycommunity at integralshift.ca
>> To manage Subscription: https://sundaycommunity.integralshift.ca
>> To Unsubscribe send email to:
>> sundaycommunity-unsubscribe at integralshift.ca
>> To Subscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-subscribe at integralshift.ca
>> Link for Zoom mass Sundays 11AM EST:
>> https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83018087848?pwd=Yjh4VnV6QXE2MFRzbEZwWUpacmJ5UT09
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________
>
> Sundaycommunity mailing list
> To send message: sundaycommunity at integralshift.ca
> To manage Subscription: https://sundaycommunity.integralshift.ca
> To Unsubscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-unsubscribe at integralshift.ca
> To Subscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-subscribe at integralshift.ca
> Link for Zoom mass Sundays 11AM EST:
> https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83018087848?pwd=Yjh4VnV6QXE2MFRzbEZwWUpacmJ5UT09
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca/attachments/20250302/6074857b/attachment.htm>