TheMalcontent
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If I Don't Get This Out of Me - I'm Going to Break
🕑 Added 2023-03-15 22:18:49 +0000 UTCThis is going to be raw and personal. I'm not looking for empathy or sympathy. The problem is if I use traditional social media channels to share these thoughts, they will get taken down for my, ehem, "hateful speech." But I can't keep these words inside of me, so you'll have to forgive this moment.
This video explains everything you need to know about the War in Ukraine. Everything.
I have had thousands upon thousands of videos and pictures shared with me since February 24. Videos that show the absolute worst and the absolute best from humans.
This video is why Ukraine will win its war.
One thing that has struck me is the hundreds of videos and pictures, literally hundreds, that I've seen of Ukrainian soldiers showing kindness to animals. Cats, dogs, hedgehogs, gerbils (I did not know gerbils were native to Ukraine a year ago). Repeated acts of kindness.
This video is why Ukraine will win its war.
I have to be careful to paint with a broad brush, I have seen videos of Russian soldiers with cats and dogs too, But I've seen other things - things that have broken me.
I've seen multiple pictures and videos of dogs with Z carved into their snouts or their bodies. I've seen dogs that were intentionally burned and tortured. I saw, and we shared, pictures of a field of cattle in Kherson killed simply because retreating Russians didn't want to leave anything for the Ukrainians.
I saw a pug smothered to death in a plastic bag simply because they could. Simply to make - a pug - suffer and brutalize their owner.
Whenever I see cruelty to humans, there is part of me that can - accept it - for lack of a better way to put it. We're a violent species. We're not the only species that have wars (monkeys do) or kill for the sake of killing (orcas do) or kill more than we can eat (ask any backyard chicken farmer what they think about raccoons), but violence against animals...
Animals that have been raised in loving environments trust humans. Heck, animals raised in a terrible environment can still trust humans. To use that trust to inflict pain simply because you can, it's just horrible.
I never told anyone about the pug, which I saw months ago, except my wife. And I wept. I sobbed. I was broken. I went as I did on April 1, 2022, after we concluded the first pictures out of Bucha sent to us asking for geolocation and verification were real. When my wife walked into my office at the worst possible moment and asked me, what was wrong, I look up and sobbed - they had killed everyone. And she asked me who. And I could barely spit out - the Russians. There are bodies in the streets. They executed whole families. We have pictures; it's more than one street. I collapsed into her and sobbed. I could not believe anyone could be that cruel. But this is Russian mir. This is the Russian way.
But not all Russians! This is ingrained in the culture, and silence is complicity. Dismissal is complicity. My wife told me stories about her childhood, how animals were treated, and how it broke her. How it was one of a long list of experiences that told her she needed to get out of Russia. That's the problem with authoritarianism and autocratic government. If you have a voice and means, you leave. If you have a voice and don't have means, you stay quiet, or you end up in prison, or worse. It is rare that those with means and a voice stay. Full disclosure, on the current path the United States is taking, my wife and I will leave, so call me the hypocrite I am. I'm in the "too old for this crap" camp.
This video broke me today because I'm just a flood of emotion right now. It is such a simple act of kindness. Owners were forced to flee; their pets were left behind. One combatant uses that for amusement. To main. To torture. To cause suffering. On the other side, you have - this. Here, let me give you my rations. Here, let me feed you. Hey, you can't jump into my car. What are you doing? Hey everyone, he wouldn't get out of the car, so meet my new battle buddy. I don't know who you are, human, but thank you for being kind to me.
Yesterday I had a story sent to me about how Russia is building a shelter for homeless animals in Mariupol. It looks like a nice facility. It was almost shared yesterday, but we saw it for what it was. There are tens of thousands essentially homeless in Mariupol. They stand in bread and porridge lines because there is no work. They have no heat. This isn't hyperbole and Ukrainian propaganda - we have Natasha of Russia and her fake humanitarian trip that showed us the "real" situation. Wonderful, you're building a shelter for homeless animals in a city that once was home to 440,000 people, now 90,000. You bombed it flat. You sent tens of thousands through concentration camps for filtration. An unknown number of people are in a modern gulag, deported to eastern Russia. If Russian occupiers had built this in Donetsk (city) or Luhansk (city), I could wrap my head around it. Not in a city that is a pit of suffering where Russian mir is on full display. This animal shelter is part of the Mariupol Comes to Life campaign, and I can see right through it.
I've lived long enough to have repeatedly seen karma balance the universe. Good eventually triumphs over evil, mostly. Sometimes it takes a very long time to get there.
Ukraine will win.
Thank you, I feel better.
Comments
I know that episode quite well. That one and The Inner Light really affected me. Apologize to those who aren't star trek and star wars nerds but, hey, you're missing out. Anxiety and depression are a big deal in my profession and the first thing they tell you is stay away from social media. 25% more likely to suffer from clinical depression if you do social media more than 2 hours a day apparently. You have a great team who can take some of that load. Sound off frequently and often to someone-anyone. I am not trying to sound like some armchair clinician-I am just another schmuck as messed up as anyone and who usually doesn't follow my own advice. I think the biggest thing to remember is you are making a DIFFERENCE. You are REALLY making a difference. Most of us just watch all this happening helplessly but you are getting the truth out there and keeping their stories in the public eye. Thanks for everything you and your team do
Them critters...they know...
I was watching an old Star Trek the Next Generation. It is the first episode where Cardassians are introduced. Chief O'Brien goes to Ten Forward and ends up talking to Gal Dukat about his war experience. He explains that prior to a battle he fought, he had never killed anything, and in desperation, he killed a Cardassian at point-blank range with a phase he did not know had been sent to maximum. The Cardassian incinerated. Gal Dukat said war is terrible, and it should have never happened. O'Brien stands up, and he says, "I don't hate you, Cardassian. I hate what you made me become." I saw that about two weeks ago, and I have not been able to get that scene out of my head. That. Exactly that. That sums it up.
Russia will burn. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Truer words have not been spoken. All autocracies fall, and fall spectacularly. Hopefully Putin and his lackeys get the Mussolini treatment.
I am glad you decided to share your feelings because I have been trying to deal with some as well. I thought of posting to see if I was the only one but I wasn't brave enough. Recently I was at an international food store and someone next to me was speaking russian. I found myself thinking, "I don't even want to talk to this person. I don't want to help them. I don't want this person to even stand next to me". It was a really distressing feeling. I am not that kind of person. Everyone has prejudices whether they are aware of them or not but I try very hard to think the best of people. Everyone is an individual with good and bad. Heck,what one person calls a terrorist suicide bomber is a martyr and hero to another-just depends whose side you are on. But this is different. Perhaps you have heard of a trivia t.v. show called Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The contestants get 3 hints if they get stuck, one of which is "ask the audience " where they can ask the audience for help with an answer. In Russia they had to do away with that hint because the russian audience would INTENTIONALLY give the wrong answer so the contestants would fail. ONLY country in the world where they had to do that in. They watch an unarmed Ukrainian soldier being assassinated and they are only angry because they video taped it?! I remember watching pictures of what we did in Abu Ghraib prison and being so angry and ashamed of my country for allowing that to happen and so thankful someone was brave enough to come forward with proof. I understand the pain of seeing an animal being harmed. I have been a veterinarian for 26 years and I have seen it all- incredible love and dedication and horrific indifference and cruelty. I don't understand how these people think. I don't understand why they are the way they are. Ukraine has to win. They just have to.
Thank you my Brother. You’ve given my grief some clarity by sharing yours.
((Dave))
Graham Thom
Ditto man! Ditto. Cruelty to animals is an indicator of wonton cruelty. One wonders, has humanity been stripped out of the Russian people at birth. The horror of a society that produces psychopaths as a by product of it's system of brutal governance.
Dave, take some time to refocus. The shit you must watch. I’m numb to dead orcs, but I take no pleasure in watching soldiers die. The worst thing you can do is keep it inside you. All my best to you and your family.
Slava Ukraini!
Jeffrey Price
I understand and agree. I too am too old for the shit I see here in America. I’m in Florida and this governor is a danger to all of us and the world. I fly a Ukrainian flag on my farm next to an American flag. I’m proud we are standing up to evil and I shudder when DeSandwich calls it a “border dispute.” We have many animals and I cannot imagine doing anything to harm them. Ever. There is just something “off” with a person who would do anything like that. We are just not wrapped too tight when we can excuse or accept evil being done against the weak. That’s just, how can I explain it? Not right. There was a book years ago that says it all, “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.” No little kid knows how to be evil. We teach that.
