Continuing my thoughts from yesterday, empires differ in the number of benefits they bring to members. The long-lasting ones such as the Roman and British empires brought significant benefits to the subject peoples. The former elements of the Roman Empire still speak derivatives of Latin. They have systems of law derived from Roman law. They practice Christianity, brought to them by the Romans. Saint Paul was a Roman citizen and proud of it.
Former members of the British Empire, now the British Commonwealth, still have warm relations with Great Britain for the most part. Their law and institutions are commonly derived from those of England. The first leaders of the newly independent United States India, Singapore were proud of their knowledge of British law and customs. They found ways to improve them, but the basic structure was what they inherited.
This was true, but to a lesser degree, among the colonies of the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. The colonial languages are still widely spoken. When I lived in Vietnam, I found the Vietnamese and Cambodians, while resentful of French rule, enamored of the French language, cuisine and architecture. In South America, I know of only one country, Paraguay, in which an indigenous language – Tupi Guarani in that case – is a state language in addition to Spanish.
The Russian Empire, on the other hand, was like many others which have ruled by brute force, doing little to improve the lives of their subjects. Not only did the satellites break free starting in 1989, never to look back, but the captive ethnicities in the Soviet Union itself decided to go their own way in 1991. Despite being forced to learn Russian, they had all retained their own languages. The same had happened with the Mongols. When their superior warmaking ability started to wane, the subject peoples broke free as quickly as they could. Neither Russia nor the Mongols brought anything of value to their people.
There is not and never was a great deal of nostalgia for the Soviets here in Ukraine. A minority could be stirred up by the language issue. Another minority, chiefly the retirees, could be stirred up by the promise of richer pensions. Ukrainians, having been mostly under the Russian yoke since 1648, were easier to sway than others. It is characteristic that the people in Galicia and Volyn, in the West, who had more recently been pulled into the Soviet Union from Poland, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and Romania, were the most restive. They had recent memories of better alternatives to Soviet rule.
I conclude with the observation that ferocious Russian propaganda notwithstanding, the knowledge of what they are fighting against steels the will of the Ukrainian people. One has only to look at the difficulty that the Russians have in forcing Russian citizenship on the inhabitants of the conquered areas, and the high levels of partisan activity – blowing up bridges, airplanes, ammo dumps and everything – in Crimea and the other occupied areas. The people do not want the Russians. The Russians never brought any benefits to anybody.
The No Benefits idea applies to Covid as well. Lest we forget how cruel the last couple of years have been, a compilation of the most vicious statements from the campaign against the unvaccinated is circulating on the Internet. It made no sense at the time how my being unvaccinated was a threat to people who had acquiesced to getting the jab and supposedly being protected. Yet, here they are, railing against us for being so selfish.
Let's remember their faces. They will be back again, remembering nothing, and with no shame or embarrassment, touting the benefits of central bank digital currencies, 15-minute cities, carbon caps and other nonsense. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. I encourage you all to get paid subscriptions to Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Robert Malone, Matthew Crawford, Alex Berenson, Naomi Wolfe, Celia Farber, Margaret Anna Alice and the other truth-tellers. Sad to say, there are few enough of them that it won't break the bank.
Our latest bit of ingenuity has been in the realm of Internet procurement. A company called Meest Express has been advertising for several years that they can deliver packages from the United States. The Aloha Republic used them to ship Hawaiian shirts to us a few months ago.
I had never figured out how it worked, but when we needed a bicycle seat for Marianna it became clear that far and away the best alternative was Kids Ride Shotgun. They do not ship to Ukraine.
Because it is a Ukrainian company, I tried to get Oksana to do it, but she was absolutely flummoxed. When I took over, I totally understood. They explain absolutely nothing about how you do it. If they had written the little bit that I am including in the next paragraph it would've saved me a lot of grief.
1. Meest Express gives you a shipping address in the United States.
2. You order the stuff you want and have it shipped to that address.
3. You provide Meest with the shipper's tracking number.|
4. They receive it into their warehouse. You may have several shipments going at once.
5. Once it is in the warehouse, you initiate a shipment to Ukraine.
6. They charge your credit card and deliver it.
7. A courier shows up with it.
However, playing a game of blind man's bluff to laboriously figure out what I have just written down here, and dealing with their execrable website it took about a month. For example, the field labeled Address, for credit card info, really wants your country. I could never enter my address – it kept saying invalid. It defaulted to Ukraine and was unable to verify my credit card.
The seat finally arrived. It is just what we need. I have had many child seats over the past 40 years, and this is without a doubt the best.
We learn as we go through life. Last night we had one of our favorite dinners, homemade corned beef with homemade sauerkraut. You make them both by sticking the ingredients in a 3 L jar and leaving them for about a week.
For corned beef, put the following into a saucepan with a pint of water, bring to a boil. Put about 4 lb beef ribs into a 3 liter – one gallon jar. Pour the mixture over the top, then fill with water and put in a dark place for a week or so.
Sauerkraut is even easier. For a 2-quart jar use a food processor to thinly cut 1 ½ pounds of cabbage and finely shred a medium carrot. Mix them with about a tablespoon of salt. Crush the mixture with your hands until the juice runs out and stuff it tightly into the jar. Leave about an inch at the top because the fluid level will rise as it starts to ferment.
As a final note, I am glad to see a boycott finally succeed. I wrote a couple of years ago how I was avoiding Coca-Cola, Gillette and Levi's on account of their woke advertising. I'm not a very big customer, and my switch to Pepsi, Bic and locally made pants did not show up in their statistics. This Bud Light boycott seems to have teeth. Hooray.
Now that I have figured out how to buy things in the United States, I am faced with the question of which company to buy them from. Target, whose advertising is below, disappeared from my list today.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man and the good-looking woman alike have light summer colds. Zoriana is in her second week of first grade, Eddie is pounding away at the piano and studying math, and Marianna is off with her mother on the bike seat to go shopping.
Addendum: Here they are on their way out:
When I traveled through the Iron Curtain countries soon after the wall came down, I found that although every person we met had studied Russian in school, everyone refused to speak it. They hated the Russians and took us to see the bullet holes in the walls in Budapest from the 1956 rebellion. They celebrated those who lost their lives resisting Russian occupation. It's the same in Ukraine now.
Clearly, Marianna enjoys pedaling with papa, hair blowing freely in the wind, more than with mama and a helmet. Or it could just be that you are an old charmer with the ladies ...