Is this a dream?
80 years ago, their relatives killed by Hitler and Nazis, today they are evacuated because of Putin invasion.
There are indeed people who are still breathing had experienced the horror of human's previous big war. The connection is not broken. The connection of humans to major wars.
Guess we never are away from it.
Had my peaceful and affluent years growing up, lucky enough to study and get out from a totalitarian regime during its short window of opening.
At almost 40 years old, the world is going through another major shuffle?
But if you think about it, whose lifetime is not filled with such events? Cold war, Apartheid, Sino-India war, Korea war, Vietnam war, Civil Rights Movements, Free Speech Movement, democratization waves in Asia, Berlin Wall, Independence movement of central and east European, Tian'anmen Square, American imperial interference in multiple fronts, nonstop civil wars and regional conflicts everywhere... each person from each ethnicity background and region has its own timeline for violence, nonstop violence. And all these are post WWs and post European/Russia/Japan imperialism and colonization.
What shocked the world is with how integrated the world is today, everyone knows someone who is from Ukraine, either a colleague, a friend, a classmate or a handsome/shy computer geek guy in the next office. And you can never differentiate Ukrainians and Russians in the office, same look same accent, they call each other brothers too, always smoking, lunching and hopping bars together.
A lot of people have seen the place, Kyiv not much different from Warsaw or Prague, as beautiful as any historical East European cities. And some people were still confused when they heard the word Ukraine "Isn't it a European country? Isn't it in EU?"
Just a few years after Poland finally joined EU, I was there. Took a very close look at the place. Heard a lot about how people struggled and made efforts to join the EU and how proud and lucky they finally were. Rebuilding after the collapse of Berlin Wall, industries, cities, democratic societies; just in time to join the new information era together with the world.
East Europeans need to face their own discrimination from richer Western Europeans, but becoming part of the wealthy democratic union is truly the dream of people there, especially the youth who embrace freedom of expression and information to the core, who embrace free trade and opportunities wherever else within EU countries.
Some of the countries got the luck to have the influence and connection from the west and north side, some of them also got the bad luck to be too close to the east side. The most difficult cases are the struggling and turning ones but tied to an obnoxious name and past, a name way worse than the "Bloc".
I did not know how I felt for the past few days. Definitely sad, cried multiple times, but never let loose of my tears like what happened during HK. Definitely excited, I think because of the excitement, I didn't cry like I cried for HK.
Excitement came from all the positive news and updates, the quantity, the quality. Basically I had no time to feel sad. Excitement also came from imagination, now the hope of one major dictator gone is on the horizon. And it happens to be, this major dictator is our dictator's adopted pedophile daddy, at least our dictator himself thought so.
With daddy's miscalculation and missteps, maybe 2 years of COVID isolation or made in Russia vaccination messed up his mind, when the whole free world suddenly found themselves on top of the stairs of the fallen "paper bear", no one hesitated to give their best kicks and spits. No one. Unless you are in the other line.
And after what happened in Feb 2022, picking the right line will weight much heavier.
Excitement also came from the constant thought in my mind: "one dictator at a time".
I still don't know if this beginning is gonna lead the humans to a better place. In the short term, any defeat of dictator is good in any way. In the slightly longer term, you still can't predict what kind of miserable cycle the ancient "middle kingdom" empire will be in, maybe opening - dictator - opening - dictator with all time authoritarian control plus on and off large scale feminines and genocides, until there's no resources left to be exploited by the free world. In the long term, humans remain humans, thirst for natural resources, ingrained with endless expansion, greed written all over DNA, life begins at fierce competition, ends at aggressive violence.
Sigh, a new world.
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