I was sorting the postal delivery recently when I opened an envelope addressed to my wife. It announced a “national campaign” and “citizen opinion survey” from the right-wing activist group Faith & Freedom Caucus’s “founder and chairman” Dr. Ralph Reed, PhD (redundantly and insecurely using both Dr. and PhD).

Aware of the group and its negative reputation among the legitimate media and public interest groups, I noticed these bold-typed statements leading the pitch and request for donations: “To Teach Millions of Young Americans What Made America Great and Train the Next Generation of Patriotic Leaders for America” and “Concerning the Assault on America by the Media, Our Nation’s Educational Institutions and Today’s Democratic Party.” I also noted that Reed boasted a “PhD in American History from Emory University” and writing “a number of books on America’s history and politics—including three national best-sellers.”

Since the fall of the Soviet Union thirty years ago, US policy on Ukraine has been an ugly mix of inconsistency, quiet aggression, fear-mongering and stupidity. Now President Biden is recklessly intensifying the same failed tactics while expecting a different outcome and risking a confrontation of the world’s two major nuclear-armed states.

What could possibly go wrong?

What passes for conventional wisdom nowadays is expressed by the cover headline of the November 29 issue of The Nation magazine, of all places:

Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World

"Flee" tells the story of Amin Nawabi (Fardin Mijdzadeh), as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon Saif (Milad Eskandari) to be husband. It's the story of a extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan.

Beginning with the death of his father in Kabul when he was a young child, and continuing in Moscow, when members of his family made several harrowing attempts to resettle in Western Europe, Amin’s childhood was defined by periods of waiting, hoping, and fleeing. Too much pain and heartbreak remained lodged beneath the surface, and he feared for both his own safety and that of his family, so they left the idea knowing that they would re-visit it when the time feels right.

The glory of Pearl Harbor Day still lingered yesterday on Human Rights Day with a Democracy Summit wrapping up and Nobel So-Called Peace Prize laureates talking about U.S. government-approved and -funded journalism. U.S. media is dominated by Donald Trump and how he’s out of power at the moment. All is just going swimmingly in the steady march of freedom and goodness. If you pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain. Or maybe it’s a small army of little men behind a thousand curtains. We can discuss the many causes and motivations of deception and self-deception. Suffice it to say that once you look, listen, or smell for an instant at the actual state of the world, you can’t turn away, and you can’t stomach the pretty picture.