We’ve seen them don tricorner hats and wave “Don’t tread on me” signs, storm the Michigan statehouse, carry long guns to make a Starbucks run, and, yes, ransack the U.S. Capitol.
Now there’s this.
Such behavior has always seemed absurd, delusional and pathetic.
But never so much as it does now, as Ukraine fights for its life.
Towns and lives reduced to rubble.
Walls sheared off buildings. Bedrooms and kitchens left open to the sky.
Streets littered with chunks of masonry and blackened husks of cars.
Parents weeping over their toddler’s corpse.
And yet, defiance reigns.
A man hops atop a Russian military vehicle waving a Ukrainian flag.
An unarmed crowd advances on armed Russian troops, forcing them back.
In a bomb shelter, a little girl sings in Ukrainian that favorite anthem of little girls, “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen,” and her thin, sweet, child’s voice brings a world watching via social media to tears.
But we’re supposed to think refusal to wear a mask in a pandemic is fighting for freedom?
If these people had even a molecule of decency, they’d be ashamed.
But they don’t, so they won’t.
For those of us who do, Ukraine is a reminder that resisting tyranny is not a performance, not something you cosplay.
