Author: Edward Alvarez

“Is the hero of a given state or people what we need today, when the whole planet should be our field of concern?” ~ Joseph Campbell

America’s proxy war against Russia continues to rattle the world, and now with the possibility of being drawn into a further conflict with China, the United States has plenty to lose and almost nothing to gain.

The war in Ukraine will be remembered as a disaster for American foreign policy. This is practically guaranteed by the failed leadership of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who could teach a master class in manipulation.

Zelensky’s arrogance has no end: although he may be considered a rock star by superficial cultural standards and admired for such things as his shirt, he is no friend to democracies anywhere.

Continue reading “False Heroes Make False Promises”

America’s over-commitment to the war in Ukraine has created an unnecessary burden for itself. In the effort to legitimize our involvement in this war, celebrities have occasionally traveled to meet with President Zelensky in a show of support meant to inspire and motivate. Most recently the actor Ben Stiller praised Zelensky as his personal “hero” after meeting him in Kyiv.

Hero worship continues to saturate American coverage of the war, while antiwar opinions have been mostly ignored. Zelensky has been put on an unimaginably high pedestal for reasons which often are emotional rather than rational. For example, Professor Susan J. Wolfson of Princeton University declared Zelensky as the “genuine Byronic hero of our times.” She puts him on the same level as the poets Byron and Shelley, which is absurd.

Zelensky may very well remind her of “Thomas Paine, Winston Churchill, and John F. Kennedy” and she may feel compelled to analyze his words as if they are the utterances of a genius poet, but none of these comparisons are based in reality. Are Zelensky’s words like a poem that we should study and admire? Absolutely not. She may forever be enthralled by his most famous phrases, but when one truly studies Zelensky’s words they are often full of contradictions and he has more than once made bizarre statements.

Continue reading “The Folly of Hero Worship”

Today more than ever, hatred toward Russia has never had such dire implications for the world. The fears of yesterday have become the even greater fears of tomorrow. The idea of peace has been waved away as meaningless, and any chance for a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine is not readily entertained, even by formerly peace-loving people.

They firmly believe that any compromise will lead to the annihilation of Ukraine and the entire world. Is this a reasonable perspective? How and why has peace become equated with escalation? Are we really going to save the world by waging war against Russia? Or is this potentially an apparition of sorts?

By the late 1940s, the power of Russian weaponry was on the minds of Americans as a harbinger of future calamities: unstoppable missiles and nuclear-powered planes were just some of the rumored advancements. Even early flying saucer sightings were suspected to be secret Russian technology.

Continue reading “A Superstitious War”