Gongol.com Archives: July 2025
July 3, 2025
An account filing war dispatches under the username Kate from Kharkiv reveals a moment of deep frustration over a reversal of American promises to send defensive missiles to Ukraine: "I'm expected to be polite. Nice. Tamed. Because technically, my anger won't help us. It won't convince more people or governments to support Ukraine. But know this: war comes when you least expect it. We didn't believe it would come for us. There was no point in it, but it came." ■ There is no owner's manual for life, but wisdom lies in training around pattern recognition. That's always been one of our species's evolutionary advantages, and it's a skill that our brains are well-primed to develop. That training can come from many different disciplines -- there are useful patterns to be discovered in math, language, music, and elsewhere. But it should be obvious that human history is one of the most wealthy sources. ■ During the early stages of World War II, Winston Churchill offered this admonition: "An effort must be made to shake off the mental and moral prostration to the will and initiative of the enemy from which we suffer." A threat had long been visible to anyone who was willing to see it, and finally it came for Britain (and later, for the United States). Looking away didn't deny the threat its power. ■ It would be stupid to look away once more: Not because Russia poses the same threat as the one that endangered Britain in 1940, but because it's undeniably part of a pattern that echoes the old one. Lives of innocent people are being sacrificed because there are madmen in the world, and no amount of looking away will deprive them of their power. ■ "Kate from Kharkhiv" is trying to send us a contemporaneous warning. Churchill sends a warning from the past. It is up to us in the present to have the wisdom to recognize patterns before it is too late.
