Last night my wife and I attended a guided tour of an exhibition of contemporary works by Ukrainian artists. It was held in an abandoned automobile showroom next to the city’s largest cemetery here in Cologne. At the end, we went outside to another building that housed a huge video screen on which President Zelenskiy spoke of the trial…
Last night my wife and I attended a guided tour of an exhibition of contemporary works by Ukrainian artists. It was held in an abandoned automobile showroom next to the city’s largest cemetery here in Cologne. At the end, we went outside to another building that housed a huge video screen on which President Zelenskiy spoke of the trials and suffering of the Ukrainian population at the hands of Russia.
The screen was composed of roughly 50 boxes each of which flashed with images too horrific to be shown as stills. Each image remained on the screen for one second, two at most. They were each so horrid, so painful, so graphic that the effect was quickly overwhelming and I had to turn away. The Germans in the room did not.
The artworks in the main building provoked contemplation – they were images and sculptures of the type one is accustomed to seeing in a museum or collection, political, yes, but familiar in their forms and methods.
The immense screen of suffering and carnage housed in the smaller, darker building was aggressively confrontational – heartbreaking, provocative, undeniable – real to the point of pain, washed as it was in the blood and tears of Ukrainian citizens.
And their suffering continues, even as we stood before that screen we knew, all of us gathered there, that this was happening now, even as I turned away to walk out into the cold, wet night there was no turning away for the millions who last night, today, tomorrow, face the relentless pounding horror being visited upon them by Russia, the madman Putin, and those across the globe who give him aid and comfort.
Will those who make this killing possible, as many Germans did immediately following World War Two, assert they did not know or could not resist, the extermination of millions by their government?
Last night, in this German city that welcomed Adolf Hitler in March of 1936 as he marched across the Rhine with 20,000 soldiers to reclaim authority over the Rhineland, an act he was forbidden by treaty from doing, one can well imagine these children and grandchildren of those who stood and cheered the Nazi soldiers as they crossed the river, recognized what is happening in Ukraine for what it is.
Professor Timothy Snyder has organized a fundraiser to provide air defense against the Iranian-made Drones bombing Ukrainian cities. It is called, Shahed Hunter, and can be found here: https://u24.gov.ua/shahedhunter
It is good of you to point out the suffering of another people who are fighting for their freedom of choice! I just wanted to let you know that I have also donated to U24 fund.
Even at my age, it is still shocking the inhumanity of humans we visit on each other! It reminds me of one of my first folk songs I learned as an adulesuant, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone". The refrain goes " When will it ever end, when will it ever end! "
Hi Louise, that song was part of my youth also. It is so easy to lose hope as wars and the horrific suffering they cause rage in the world. These conflicts are caused by people that have a lack of love that they try to fix by getting more of something that can not be hoarded but needs to be protected and shared. ‘Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.” Robert Anton Wilson. In order to Immanentize the eschaton - create utopian conditions on the earth every person would have to be able to choose love over fear. Every single one.. for even just one apple of evil spoils the whole barrel. We all choose either the light or dark to enter our souls every day. I don’t know how long it will take for everyone to choose the light. Time might be something that we don’t quite understand yet as humans. But I do know that eventually, in it’s fullness that the light and love will be victorious. A place of evil and darkness and isolation - hell, will not be a place anyone wants to dwell in for eternity.
There was also, "When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn." My feeling is that we will always spawn narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths, so it can't end and we can't learn our way out of this.
I agree. We as humans have capacity for both great good and great evil. It does make me really angry that a few egos are causing so much pain in today's world along with the fundamentalists in Iran and here as well.
My feeling is that USians in particular refuse to acknowledge the extent to which our economic system consistently and continuously rewards people for being antisocial and anti-society: those who wind up with power are too often those who are incapable of using it wisely, with "we the people" in mind.
Government is our best mechanism for curbing the mindless operation of corporate capitalism, and if the decades since Reagan -- not to mention the current state of the GOP -- haven't shown us what happens when corporate capitalism is left to its own devices, I wonder if we are capable of self-government.
Capitalism, by definition is exploitive. Why do we think it's okay for business to earn a profit? That profit comes at the cost of exploitation of workers and consumers. You always pay more for a produce or service than it's actually worth. Business probably began as a vehicle for people to work and earn a living, but has metamorphized into a way for those at the top to get huge paychecks and to keep stockholders happy.
I think it's okay for businesses to plan ahead for improvements, research, etc., that often can't be covered out of the operating budget, because the return on investment doesn't come immediately. They need to finance them out of their profits, and/or by borrowing (which means, more or less, financing them out of the profits of others). However, as the dismal performance of supply-side economics showed, and continues to show, this is not what businesses generally do with their profits if they are free to do whatever the hell benefits those at the top.
I guess I wouldn't call the financing for improvements, part of the profit. It's one of the costs of doing business. It's the excess that's the problem, as it comes at the cost of exploiting others.
Yes, and we all should listen to two Bob Dylan classics also: "It's Alright, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding," and "Masters of War." I think our president and congress need to listen to all protest songs and understand what leaders are doing.
The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape. We need closer inspection of the complexities and ambiguities of our own human nature. How does natural and necessary self-interest become negligence or cruelty? Excessive power, and there are many forms of it, tends to corrupt, and excessive narcissism humanity's tragic flaw. How narcissistic do you have to be to fly planeloads of terrified people into occupied buildings and feel like a hero? And yet there are many manifestations of subtle (or not) sociopathy to be found in our own society and it's history. It's human and if not better managed, could undo our entire species. We are broadly admonished to be clever, but do we encourage one another, our own selves included, to be wise? Are we encouraged to identify our own limitations?
I wonder how much of this antisocial behavior emanates from the squelching of empathy in childhood, and never being helped to both accept and understand ourselves. The more we identify and accept the unsavory aspects of our own nature, the less likely we will need to subject others to it.
It seems to me that all human traits emerge from the de facto experiment which is our species. All serve or have served in some way our own species existence. That includes compassion as well as cruelty, cooperation as well as competition, a sense of beauty, an appreciation of poetry, if only in the form of song. The entire compass of our interests, expressions and emotions. We are so often so invested in identification with an ideology, enough that many will die for it. But what is really real, and how do we establish that? And what most matters, to us as individuals and to us as an aggregated society and species? What will be our death-bed solace and regrets?
To address your question about what is real - nothing because human beings can't see anything completely accurately, so we construct reality. All human beings know or think is a social construct- something a number of us agree must be the truth. The constructs change over time, some are useful for the majority of us, while others are just cruel. Some gain dominance, while others fall by the wayside. I would guess that the closest we get to anything like absolute truth must be in mathematics or physics. But, I'm no mathematician or physicist, so I might be wrong. The other thing about us is our very complex brain, also a result of evolution. However it takes many years to mature, because of its complexity -26 years. In the meantime, with immature brain functioning, and our complete dependence at birth, (partly due to our large craniums) we are at the mercy of our environment for a long time before we can really think well. We are vulnerable to all kinds of insults in that time, that can result in a lot of sociopathy.
OK, but look how much evidence we have around us of people devoting their energy and time to enterprises like family and community that don't pay, that even cost the individual in tangible and intangible ways. And although there are certainly female narcissists, sociopaths, etc., what you describe as "human" seems much more often exemplified by men, and not just in our particular culture.
I'm intrigued by the idea that "fly[ing] planeloads of terrified people into occupied buildings" is narcissistic. Annihilating oneself is narcissistic? The 9/11 hijackers, and other suicide bombers, see themselves as serving a higher cause -- but OTOH, that higher cause is generally a male deity and a male-dominated religion, so the potential connection *is* there. I think.
Narcissistic means that the person has assumed themselves to be superior, without flaws, and more important than others. This can take many forms. It is accompanied by a lack of empathy for others, since the person is usually preoccupied with themselves and their own agenda. Most human babies are born with the capacity for empathy, but many, often boys, are taught to ignore that aspect of themselves because it's not "masculine". In traditional societies, organized around rigid religions, where women have no voice, boys and men spend most of their lives in the company of other men, learning how to squelch their empathic tendencies. The first people they learn to dismiss and lose their empathy for are their mothers and other women. This is toxic masculinity and the cause of much of the suffering in the world.
Based on my experience as male, I think that men are in particular trained to never under any circumstances to express fear, or admit that they are hurt; and where those feeling cannot be ignored, to convert them into rage. Perhaps that is advantageous on a battlefield, but it also may be the underlying basis of the war.
And of course there are advantages (and costs) to predatory behavior which I suspect you will see acted out in almost any schoolyard, as children vie for social power. Responsible stewardship discourages predation by addressing its roots.
I also find examples of what is labeled "religion" that assures it's membership that they are inherently superior to everybody else, so much so that that others have no human rights worth bothering about; although other strains of religion focus on humility and compassion. Humility does not indicate a sense of inferiority, but rather being non-complacent, non-supremacist.
Our culture does not set up people for success, rather people succeed in spite of. And too many people are subjected to traumatic and otherwise troubling childhoods and get the message to "buck up" or take out their grievances on others. Generations of dysfunctional family life has been hardwired into our brains. Native Americans could probably do quite well if they augmented their casino offerings with "raising healthy children" offerings. Our children are not getting what they need: not enough love and too much criticism or neglect or downright abuse. We have to look at the origins or we will get nowhere and we have been getting nowhere for a ridiculous amount of time. Our medical care system separates physical health from mental health and you can't have one without the other. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/id1081584611?i=1000587705799
I agree. I was a mental health professional working with adults with traumatic childhoods. Much of their trauma, and accompanying psychological scars were intergenerational. The research indicates that childhood trauma can result in many different physical problems in adulthood and reduced longevity. Some of this may be about our glorification of violence, gender silos, and many people not understanding child development.
Catechism Episcopal Church, memorization required for confirmation, Ten Commandments, subtext for Second Commandment: “And the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children until the Third and Fourth Generation of them that hate me …” Someone understood it many years ago. Then science “proved” it.
The root of abiding wisdom is often quite ancient, but so also is much misunderstanding. Science cannot answer every question, but it can often inform and refine our view of our circumstances. Science never proves anything once and for all, but it provides a testable basis for confidence in certain interpretations.
That's so interesting J. Nol. Thanks you. I really wish this would come up more in our contemporary discussions. For some reason our society seems to not want to deal with/look at/acknowledge/help this type of thing. (Maybe because there's no money in it??? They talk about the drug industry steering doctors and procedures.) The first thing after a mass shooting is "What was the motive?" My feeling is that just because a person says what their motive is (race, homophobia, etc.), that doesn't make it the truth. Perhaps the motive was a reaction/acting out due to generations of trauma!
We need tactics to fight and guard against criminally irresponsible or predatory behavior, but also strategies to reduce it. It's the strategy part that societies seem to give the short shrift.
Some of the neurons that are part of our brain are a meter long. We are vastly more interactive internally than the highest tech we cobble together. Mind and body only seem like maybe two different things. There is not much training for child-rearing apart from what one experienced in one's family of origin. I think a much of the root of authoritarianism is projected from an authoritarian upbringing. I recall reading in the local paper some years ago that a one year old was beaten to death by his father and a pastor for "disobeying" a command to touch his toes, a victim of malignant narcissism. I think we grow as a species by flexing our (what some people call) "mirror neurons" (in any case empathy) and comparing notes.
Agreed. Although those meter long neurons are motor neurons. Some animals have neurons even longer, because of course, they're longer. Anyway, agreed that mind and body are one, the mind being encompassed by or part of the body. Alice Miller wrote about how an entire country can be held hostage by a leader who's had an authoritarian upbringing - Romania and Ceaușescu, or how a whole nation will be convinced to follow an authoritarian leader largely due to the child rearing expert of the day - Germany in the 1800s and early 1900s. "For your own good: The hidden cruelty in childhood and the roots of violence". She writes eloquently about how we humans perpetuate this by passing it on to subsequent generations.
R Dooley, as a fellow Ex Pat, I am interested in your take on why the Germans at this exhibition were able to not look away. I've been here in Wiesbaden, working at the Ev. Bergkirche, which was the only "resistance" church in the area.
I think of the white population of my childhood in Florida and its, at best, patronizing attitude toward the black people who cleaned their houses and chopped the sugarcane and all the other dirty work. As I've said in other posts, my great-grandfather was a Klansman, building Southern Baptist churches in NE Florida.
Hoods covered a lot back in those days, now the Proud Boys and their ilk are well, proud. Doing genealogy in my N.C. Hometown, I uncovered more white bull Schitt than I was expecting. All from good Baptists, of course.
I am now reading a bio of Mrs. Frank Leslie who made up her own bio despite being probably half black and illegitimate. It describes the turmoil in the country before the Civil War, particularly in NYC. So far that has included lynchings of black people, riot by firemen, yellow fever, workers basically supporting white supremacy, the hatred even in the North for Lincoln when he was elected and so forth. It was also a time when 90% of the country lived in poverty. She became a successful business woman and ran Frank Leslie's publication empire and found success during the Gilded Age. I am just where she has met him despite being married to someone else. Then I thought about all the complaints I hear today about crime, drugs, antifa, BLM, COVID, and realize once again that nothing changes except that we know have weapons that kill much more efficiently.
Yikes... how racism and christianity (small c intended) denies love for all of humanity. How do they read their bible and carry out hooded crimes against humanity? Hurts my brain and sensibilities about life.
“Dehumanize” is a big word. As a Virginian, I knew racism, but not dehumanizing. Thank you for adding this word to my understanding of fierce hatred of “the other” which I am thinking is based on fear of the unknown. My daughter just spent Krystalknacht in Berlin and told me of all the lighted candles. She spoke at the same time of the Ukrainians taken in by the Germans and how everyone is organizing to get through the winter (it has already snowed) with the least possible use of fuel.
We need some of that spirit in America. Interesting that Krystalnacht and WWII and Putin’s war in Ukraine all come together and we are not talking about US WWII sacrifices, but are desperately trying to deal with our own fear of “the other.” How do we “get human” in the face of climate change and being a melting pot of everyone (think Statue of Liberty and sing Irving Berlin’s setting of Emma Lazarus’ words)?
Yes. I wonder about those hoods. Were they worn because even those racist people knew at some level that they were in the wrong? Why hide your face if you believe your behavior is acceptable?
I have known several Baptists who were splendid, so have to put in a good word for them. With the exception of the Baptist preacher who was in the local Baptist church (who may not have been a Virginian) all the rest were. There were three churches in my small Virginia neighborhood: Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist. I was brought up in the Episcopal Church, but summer camp was Bible School, and the Baptists had the best because we sang and I learned about Baptist teaching without prejudice. All our parents were joined in WWII patriotism and in various neighborhood clubs and the kids at public school. I left the area at 17, having had neighbors and friends from all three denominations.
My "at home" church, Judson Memorial Church, is Baptist and UCC, with many other cooperative arms. The whole notion of the Baptist denomination is that people who want to be baptized have to make that decision themselves, based on their own spiritual path.
Judson opened its doors at the end of the 19th century, serving the poor, mostly italian, immigrants. In the 1960s, it opened its doors to the arts communities, had a help center for women seeking abortions and also had a medical bus for prostitutes.
We were at the front of Occupy Wallstreet (remember the Golden Calf? That was a Judson artist) and continue to be engaged in all manner of helping where help is needed.
Take a look at Judson Memorial in Greenwich Village. There are Baptists and there are Southern Baptists, which is the branch that split off with the confederate states. And they are the ones that have made most of the nastiness.
Hi Rosalind, I too grew up in the South. but moved North as a young man and remained there for many years. We have that, and our current German residence, in common.
I don't know the answer to your question. It was a moment - an observation. I could not stand before that screen any longer, while the others in the room continued to study it.
Perhaps many or some of them left shortly after I did, but when I turned to go, the image of the group remaining there - front-lit before the flashing screen - was quite powerful.
Yes, they have. I was just in Germany for two months visiting family in the Bonn area. I did not know of this exhibit but it would have been very difficult to view. There is still a shadow over the country for what took place during WWII. Last week at 10 pm, a knock on the door of our Airbnb from police, telling us we must evacuate immediately and leave a note on the door that we had left. a WWII bomb had been found 150 meters from our apartment, it was 500 kilos. They were breaking ground for a new home just around the corner. We left within 10 minutes and off to our daughter's home. About 900 bombs are found every year. There is still a great sorrow in this country. I don't know what Putin would want with a completely decimated country. A power play. I also gave to Timothy Snyder's U24. The past week or two, Russia has been relentlessly pounding Ukraine and I'm very fearful.
It is not true power but the lack of the ability to see or feel love. True power does not need to take but gives from the fullness of a being connected to a higher source. Guided and protected by the light.
I think that predatory sociopathy, that which pleasures in subjugating and harming others, pretty much covers what is also called "evil". It's the monomaniacal self-absorption on sees in Putin ally, Donald Trump. While advising labeling of behavior rather than individuals a page on Healthline offers:
"There’s no standard list of sociopath signs, but the signs and symptoms of ASPD include a persistent pattern of disregard for others. For example:
> ignoring social norms and laws, or breaking rules at school or work, overstepping social boundaries, stealing, stalking and harassing others, and destroying property
> dishonesty and deceit, including using false identities and manipulating others for personal gain
> difficulty controlling impulses and planning for the future, or acting without considering the consequences
> aggressive or aggravated behavior, including frequent fights or physical conflict with others
>disregard for personal safety, or the safety of others
difficulty managing responsibilities, including showing up at work, handling tasks, or paying rent and bills
> little to no guilt or remorse, or a tendency to justify actions that negatively affect others
People with ASPD* generally show little emotion or interest in the lives of others. They might:
>come across as arrogant or superior, with firmly fixed opinions
>use humor, intelligence, and charisma to manipulate
>seem charming at first, until their self-interest becomes clear
People with ASPD* generally find it challenging to maintain friendships, relationships, and other mutually fulfilling connections. This difficulty may stem from traits, like:
>low empathy and emotional intelligence
>difficulty learning from mistakes
> lack of concern for the safety of others
> a tendency to intimidate and threaten in order to maintain control "
* AntiSocial Personality Disorder which is an official clinical diagnosis, while psychopathy and an sociopathy are not. I think excessive personal power often reinforces it (tends to corrupt). Certainly an all-consuming lust for power appears in that landscape.
Yes, MaryPat. That is not to say that there is no antisemitism. But for the past decade or more, there is a project of remembrance: the Stolpersteins, or stumbling blocks, are bronze blocks that are put into the pavement in front of the homes of the Jewish families who were murdered or fled or took their own lives. The story of each person is read allowed and attested to. This is not only in Germany, but also 30 European nations. Young people are encouraged to help in the research - a way to keep the memory of the holocaust alive.
It seems that white nationalism is an international virus. Oddly, the political party with the biggest mouth that is pushing back on immigration in Germany is the CDU - the Christian Democratic Union. Goes to show that Christian isn't a good badge to wear if one is interested in the advice of the Jewish rabbi of two millenea ago. Some of the biggest big-mouths are the most arrogant - and stupid as well because Germany is in need of more people in the workforce.
Hopefully the screen will remain front lit further exposing "mob boss" Trump and his band of thugs, cut out of the same racist cloth as you good people encountered growing up.
My uncle was a Klansman deacon of his Southern Baptist church in East Mississippi.
I've seen KKK pray before getting into robes & hoods. To whom are they praying? Surely not Jesus. If they are all Southern Baptists, does that make it a tax exempt Terrorist Org?
The problem is "Christ" which is an easy way to erase Jesus - Jesus, the Jewish rabbi. I go to great lengths to minimize christing Jesus, who is said to have said, "Why do you call me good? There is only one that is good and that is God." Christ makes an easy icon, halo and all. Put him on a pedestal and pray whatever you want. Go into what the rabbi Jesus had to say, and there's no room at the inn for him and the other outcasts he was close to.
The Dutch West India Trading Company traded in everything, including human beings. There's some controversy over how much they were involved, but suffice it to say, they were active in moving people from Africa to the "New world" between the 1500s and the 1800s. They opened up the sugar market, which also used slaves. There were only minor protests in The Netherlands against it. So, the whole country, as many European countries were, was complicit in the practice.
Go to the coastal areas in the Netherlands where the ruins of the massive stone holding tanks that the Dutch built to hold the slaves for transport. Horrifying.
You make some good points about who might have been complicit. But, I have a less generous perspective, in that silence means complicity. Anyway, horrible part of Dutch history for sure. Most of the North East, around New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, had a lot of Dutch settlers, and the names of places have roots in the Dutch language. That same Dutch West Indies Trading Company sold off New York. If they hadn't, we all could have been speaking Dutch! See the book Island at the Center of the World by Russel Shorto for a great description of the history of that area.
Thanks, R Dooley, for sharing your perspective on the exhibits in Köln and for sharing Prof. Timothy Snyder's response.
I recommend to the attention of members of the LFAA community the Guardian's article on Prof. Snyder's fundraiser - not least because it contains a link to his Yale course on the millennium-plus history of Ukraine.
Quizt, a forum commenter, spoke of a fundraising effort by Timothy Snyder, the Yale prof. It works to purchase drone hunters to aid in Ukraine’s air defense. If you want to check this out, here’s the site: https://u24.gov.ua/shahedhunter
What rises from your writing above, RDooley(NY), is the awareness of the inexplicable capacity within our human species towards destruction. How the horrors of violence and wars, which is only now transmittable world-wide as never before, has gone on for centuries. How do we evolve beyond this? What final straw brings transformation such that such vast costs and resources weigh into negotiation and mutual betterment vs. destruction and slaughter? I grieve for all of human history.
Thank you for putting in this link. It is another thing I can do besides writing the Biden administration and the Scholz administrations asking them to help shield the Ukraine. I have also asked that non gas power generators be sent in huge numbers, and have made some energy suggestions as well, for energy sources that are not fossil fuel and underground. I have suggested that they develop a shield that can boomerang the drones back to where they came from, because of course, once people realize that the missiles they send out come right back to them, they will stop shooting them.
I have been reading about Kherson and the horrific experiences of people there. On a hopeful note, I read three articles that claim that 1) Foreign Affairs titled "Don't Panic About Putin: Even Desperate Leaders Tend to Avoid Catastrophe," which is saying Putin is unlikely to risk the negative reactions of everyone, including all of this allies and his people, to using nuclear weapons particularly since there is blowback.
2) The Atlantic has an article, "The Future of American Warfare is Unfolding in Ukraine" where the authors say that aiding countries without getting directly involved in combat is a better model for us, and that Ukraine has been much more effective than Afghanistan because it is the fight they are motivated to have and we are supporting with weapons, aid, and intelligence.
3) Yesterday Meduza said that the Ukrainian Intelligence has evidence that Russia is going to leave the area around the Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant. Today they say the Russians claim that Ukrainians were going to plant a bomb in Zaporizhzhia. If the Russians leave I assume and a neutral party takes over, that would hopefully make inroads into peace.
I’ve been trying for days to donate to this fundraiser but each time I try, with a credit card payment, I get a message that my donation was unsuccessful. Does anyone know why this would happen and how I could make it work?
I don't want to offend anyone, but when that issue happens to me, it is always because my card has reached it's credit limit. It happens to me frequently enough that I just automatically either enter my other card, or wait until I have made a payment. If you think that you are not near your credit limit, you had better call your credit card company and ask for recent charges on your card! Definitely check right away!
Gina, I had no problem using a credit card.I did not use apple pay It did take quite a while to process my donation, but it finally went through. Do you have another credit card you could try?
Last night my wife and I attended a guided tour of an exhibition of contemporary works by Ukrainian artists. It was held in an abandoned automobile showroom next to the city’s largest cemetery here in Cologne. At the end, we went outside to another building that housed a huge video screen on which President Zelenskiy spoke of the trials and suffering of the Ukrainian population at the hands of Russia.
The screen was composed of roughly 50 boxes each of which flashed with images too horrific to be shown as stills. Each image remained on the screen for one second, two at most. They were each so horrid, so painful, so graphic that the effect was quickly overwhelming and I had to turn away. The Germans in the room did not.
The artworks in the main building provoked contemplation – they were images and sculptures of the type one is accustomed to seeing in a museum or collection, political, yes, but familiar in their forms and methods.
The immense screen of suffering and carnage housed in the smaller, darker building was aggressively confrontational – heartbreaking, provocative, undeniable – real to the point of pain, washed as it was in the blood and tears of Ukrainian citizens.
And their suffering continues, even as we stood before that screen we knew, all of us gathered there, that this was happening now, even as I turned away to walk out into the cold, wet night there was no turning away for the millions who last night, today, tomorrow, face the relentless pounding horror being visited upon them by Russia, the madman Putin, and those across the globe who give him aid and comfort.
Will those who make this killing possible, as many Germans did immediately following World War Two, assert they did not know or could not resist, the extermination of millions by their government?
Last night, in this German city that welcomed Adolf Hitler in March of 1936 as he marched across the Rhine with 20,000 soldiers to reclaim authority over the Rhineland, an act he was forbidden by treaty from doing, one can well imagine these children and grandchildren of those who stood and cheered the Nazi soldiers as they crossed the river, recognized what is happening in Ukraine for what it is.
Professor Timothy Snyder has organized a fundraiser to provide air defense against the Iranian-made Drones bombing Ukrainian cities. It is called, Shahed Hunter, and can be found here: https://u24.gov.ua/shahedhunter
This article explains the project in more detail: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/28/russia-wins-by-losing-timothy-snyder-on-raising-funds-for-ukrainian-drone-defence
It is good of you to point out the suffering of another people who are fighting for their freedom of choice! I just wanted to let you know that I have also donated to U24 fund.
Even at my age, it is still shocking the inhumanity of humans we visit on each other! It reminds me of one of my first folk songs I learned as an adulesuant, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone". The refrain goes " When will it ever end, when will it ever end! "
Hi Louise, that song was part of my youth also. It is so easy to lose hope as wars and the horrific suffering they cause rage in the world. These conflicts are caused by people that have a lack of love that they try to fix by getting more of something that can not be hoarded but needs to be protected and shared. ‘Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.” Robert Anton Wilson. In order to Immanentize the eschaton - create utopian conditions on the earth every person would have to be able to choose love over fear. Every single one.. for even just one apple of evil spoils the whole barrel. We all choose either the light or dark to enter our souls every day. I don’t know how long it will take for everyone to choose the light. Time might be something that we don’t quite understand yet as humans. But I do know that eventually, in it’s fullness that the light and love will be victorious. A place of evil and darkness and isolation - hell, will not be a place anyone wants to dwell in for eternity.
There was also, "When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn." My feeling is that we will always spawn narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths, so it can't end and we can't learn our way out of this.
I agree. We as humans have capacity for both great good and great evil. It does make me really angry that a few egos are causing so much pain in today's world along with the fundamentalists in Iran and here as well.
My feeling is that USians in particular refuse to acknowledge the extent to which our economic system consistently and continuously rewards people for being antisocial and anti-society: those who wind up with power are too often those who are incapable of using it wisely, with "we the people" in mind.
Government is our best mechanism for curbing the mindless operation of corporate capitalism, and if the decades since Reagan -- not to mention the current state of the GOP -- haven't shown us what happens when corporate capitalism is left to its own devices, I wonder if we are capable of self-government.
Capitalism, by definition is exploitive. Why do we think it's okay for business to earn a profit? That profit comes at the cost of exploitation of workers and consumers. You always pay more for a produce or service than it's actually worth. Business probably began as a vehicle for people to work and earn a living, but has metamorphized into a way for those at the top to get huge paychecks and to keep stockholders happy.
I think it's okay for businesses to plan ahead for improvements, research, etc., that often can't be covered out of the operating budget, because the return on investment doesn't come immediately. They need to finance them out of their profits, and/or by borrowing (which means, more or less, financing them out of the profits of others). However, as the dismal performance of supply-side economics showed, and continues to show, this is not what businesses generally do with their profits if they are free to do whatever the hell benefits those at the top.
I guess I wouldn't call the financing for improvements, part of the profit. It's one of the costs of doing business. It's the excess that's the problem, as it comes at the cost of exploiting others.
Yes, and we all should listen to two Bob Dylan classics also: "It's Alright, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding," and "Masters of War." I think our president and congress need to listen to all protest songs and understand what leaders are doing.
The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape. We need closer inspection of the complexities and ambiguities of our own human nature. How does natural and necessary self-interest become negligence or cruelty? Excessive power, and there are many forms of it, tends to corrupt, and excessive narcissism humanity's tragic flaw. How narcissistic do you have to be to fly planeloads of terrified people into occupied buildings and feel like a hero? And yet there are many manifestations of subtle (or not) sociopathy to be found in our own society and it's history. It's human and if not better managed, could undo our entire species. We are broadly admonished to be clever, but do we encourage one another, our own selves included, to be wise? Are we encouraged to identify our own limitations?
I wonder how much of this antisocial behavior emanates from the squelching of empathy in childhood, and never being helped to both accept and understand ourselves. The more we identify and accept the unsavory aspects of our own nature, the less likely we will need to subject others to it.
It seems to me that all human traits emerge from the de facto experiment which is our species. All serve or have served in some way our own species existence. That includes compassion as well as cruelty, cooperation as well as competition, a sense of beauty, an appreciation of poetry, if only in the form of song. The entire compass of our interests, expressions and emotions. We are so often so invested in identification with an ideology, enough that many will die for it. But what is really real, and how do we establish that? And what most matters, to us as individuals and to us as an aggregated society and species? What will be our death-bed solace and regrets?
To address your question about what is real - nothing because human beings can't see anything completely accurately, so we construct reality. All human beings know or think is a social construct- something a number of us agree must be the truth. The constructs change over time, some are useful for the majority of us, while others are just cruel. Some gain dominance, while others fall by the wayside. I would guess that the closest we get to anything like absolute truth must be in mathematics or physics. But, I'm no mathematician or physicist, so I might be wrong. The other thing about us is our very complex brain, also a result of evolution. However it takes many years to mature, because of its complexity -26 years. In the meantime, with immature brain functioning, and our complete dependence at birth, (partly due to our large craniums) we are at the mercy of our environment for a long time before we can really think well. We are vulnerable to all kinds of insults in that time, that can result in a lot of sociopathy.
how true that is!!
OK, but look how much evidence we have around us of people devoting their energy and time to enterprises like family and community that don't pay, that even cost the individual in tangible and intangible ways. And although there are certainly female narcissists, sociopaths, etc., what you describe as "human" seems much more often exemplified by men, and not just in our particular culture.
I'm intrigued by the idea that "fly[ing] planeloads of terrified people into occupied buildings" is narcissistic. Annihilating oneself is narcissistic? The 9/11 hijackers, and other suicide bombers, see themselves as serving a higher cause -- but OTOH, that higher cause is generally a male deity and a male-dominated religion, so the potential connection *is* there. I think.
Narcissistic means that the person has assumed themselves to be superior, without flaws, and more important than others. This can take many forms. It is accompanied by a lack of empathy for others, since the person is usually preoccupied with themselves and their own agenda. Most human babies are born with the capacity for empathy, but many, often boys, are taught to ignore that aspect of themselves because it's not "masculine". In traditional societies, organized around rigid religions, where women have no voice, boys and men spend most of their lives in the company of other men, learning how to squelch their empathic tendencies. The first people they learn to dismiss and lose their empathy for are their mothers and other women. This is toxic masculinity and the cause of much of the suffering in the world.
Based on my experience as male, I think that men are in particular trained to never under any circumstances to express fear, or admit that they are hurt; and where those feeling cannot be ignored, to convert them into rage. Perhaps that is advantageous on a battlefield, but it also may be the underlying basis of the war.
And of course there are advantages (and costs) to predatory behavior which I suspect you will see acted out in almost any schoolyard, as children vie for social power. Responsible stewardship discourages predation by addressing its roots.
I also find examples of what is labeled "religion" that assures it's membership that they are inherently superior to everybody else, so much so that that others have no human rights worth bothering about; although other strains of religion focus on humility and compassion. Humility does not indicate a sense of inferiority, but rather being non-complacent, non-supremacist.
Our culture does not set up people for success, rather people succeed in spite of. And too many people are subjected to traumatic and otherwise troubling childhoods and get the message to "buck up" or take out their grievances on others. Generations of dysfunctional family life has been hardwired into our brains. Native Americans could probably do quite well if they augmented their casino offerings with "raising healthy children" offerings. Our children are not getting what they need: not enough love and too much criticism or neglect or downright abuse. We have to look at the origins or we will get nowhere and we have been getting nowhere for a ridiculous amount of time. Our medical care system separates physical health from mental health and you can't have one without the other. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/id1081584611?i=1000587705799
I agree. I was a mental health professional working with adults with traumatic childhoods. Much of their trauma, and accompanying psychological scars were intergenerational. The research indicates that childhood trauma can result in many different physical problems in adulthood and reduced longevity. Some of this may be about our glorification of violence, gender silos, and many people not understanding child development.
Catechism Episcopal Church, memorization required for confirmation, Ten Commandments, subtext for Second Commandment: “And the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children until the Third and Fourth Generation of them that hate me …” Someone understood it many years ago. Then science “proved” it.
The root of abiding wisdom is often quite ancient, but so also is much misunderstanding. Science cannot answer every question, but it can often inform and refine our view of our circumstances. Science never proves anything once and for all, but it provides a testable basis for confidence in certain interpretations.
That's so interesting J. Nol. Thanks you. I really wish this would come up more in our contemporary discussions. For some reason our society seems to not want to deal with/look at/acknowledge/help this type of thing. (Maybe because there's no money in it??? They talk about the drug industry steering doctors and procedures.) The first thing after a mass shooting is "What was the motive?" My feeling is that just because a person says what their motive is (race, homophobia, etc.), that doesn't make it the truth. Perhaps the motive was a reaction/acting out due to generations of trauma!
We need tactics to fight and guard against criminally irresponsible or predatory behavior, but also strategies to reduce it. It's the strategy part that societies seem to give the short shrift.
Some of the neurons that are part of our brain are a meter long. We are vastly more interactive internally than the highest tech we cobble together. Mind and body only seem like maybe two different things. There is not much training for child-rearing apart from what one experienced in one's family of origin. I think a much of the root of authoritarianism is projected from an authoritarian upbringing. I recall reading in the local paper some years ago that a one year old was beaten to death by his father and a pastor for "disobeying" a command to touch his toes, a victim of malignant narcissism. I think we grow as a species by flexing our (what some people call) "mirror neurons" (in any case empathy) and comparing notes.
Agreed. Although those meter long neurons are motor neurons. Some animals have neurons even longer, because of course, they're longer. Anyway, agreed that mind and body are one, the mind being encompassed by or part of the body. Alice Miller wrote about how an entire country can be held hostage by a leader who's had an authoritarian upbringing - Romania and Ceaușescu, or how a whole nation will be convinced to follow an authoritarian leader largely due to the child rearing expert of the day - Germany in the 1800s and early 1900s. "For your own good: The hidden cruelty in childhood and the roots of violence". She writes eloquently about how we humans perpetuate this by passing it on to subsequent generations.
wow
Not only will we spawn narcissists and sociopaths as leaders, we will also produce compliant soldiers who will operationalize the madness.
yes
I thought the refrain was "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?"
I think that’s right.
Gone to soldiers every one...
Well, not everyone… lots of my friends went to Canada or feigned mental illness or homosexuality.
R Dooley, as a fellow Ex Pat, I am interested in your take on why the Germans at this exhibition were able to not look away. I've been here in Wiesbaden, working at the Ev. Bergkirche, which was the only "resistance" church in the area.
I think of the white population of my childhood in Florida and its, at best, patronizing attitude toward the black people who cleaned their houses and chopped the sugarcane and all the other dirty work. As I've said in other posts, my great-grandfather was a Klansman, building Southern Baptist churches in NE Florida.
Hoods covered a lot back in those days, now the Proud Boys and their ilk are well, proud. Doing genealogy in my N.C. Hometown, I uncovered more white bull Schitt than I was expecting. All from good Baptists, of course.
I am now reading a bio of Mrs. Frank Leslie who made up her own bio despite being probably half black and illegitimate. It describes the turmoil in the country before the Civil War, particularly in NYC. So far that has included lynchings of black people, riot by firemen, yellow fever, workers basically supporting white supremacy, the hatred even in the North for Lincoln when he was elected and so forth. It was also a time when 90% of the country lived in poverty. She became a successful business woman and ran Frank Leslie's publication empire and found success during the Gilded Age. I am just where she has met him despite being married to someone else. Then I thought about all the complaints I hear today about crime, drugs, antifa, BLM, COVID, and realize once again that nothing changes except that we know have weapons that kill much more efficiently.
Not surprised... I've quoted my great-grandfather's tombstone here before:
"A lover of Christ and a friend to his fellow man"
KKK
Yikes... how racism and christianity (small c intended) denies love for all of humanity. How do they read their bible and carry out hooded crimes against humanity? Hurts my brain and sensibilities about life.
How indeed? A question for the ages.
When you dehumanize people it seems to become easy.
“Dehumanize” is a big word. As a Virginian, I knew racism, but not dehumanizing. Thank you for adding this word to my understanding of fierce hatred of “the other” which I am thinking is based on fear of the unknown. My daughter just spent Krystalknacht in Berlin and told me of all the lighted candles. She spoke at the same time of the Ukrainians taken in by the Germans and how everyone is organizing to get through the winter (it has already snowed) with the least possible use of fuel.
We need some of that spirit in America. Interesting that Krystalnacht and WWII and Putin’s war in Ukraine all come together and we are not talking about US WWII sacrifices, but are desperately trying to deal with our own fear of “the other.” How do we “get human” in the face of climate change and being a melting pot of everyone (think Statue of Liberty and sing Irving Berlin’s setting of Emma Lazarus’ words)?
Like the Q-Anoners, they think they're purifying the race. Like the midaeval grand inquisitors: get baptized or die - or maybe both.
I agree and it is still happening today!
Whatever God may be to you or to me, God isn't the posession of folks who call themselves christians. What a small god that would be...
Yes. I wonder about those hoods. Were they worn because even those racist people knew at some level that they were in the wrong? Why hide your face if you believe your behavior is acceptable?
I think the whole costume was designed to scare black people....
Sadly expected given etiology of Baptists.
I have known several Baptists who were splendid, so have to put in a good word for them. With the exception of the Baptist preacher who was in the local Baptist church (who may not have been a Virginian) all the rest were. There were three churches in my small Virginia neighborhood: Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist. I was brought up in the Episcopal Church, but summer camp was Bible School, and the Baptists had the best because we sang and I learned about Baptist teaching without prejudice. All our parents were joined in WWII patriotism and in various neighborhood clubs and the kids at public school. I left the area at 17, having had neighbors and friends from all three denominations.
Dear Citizen60,
My "at home" church, Judson Memorial Church, is Baptist and UCC, with many other cooperative arms. The whole notion of the Baptist denomination is that people who want to be baptized have to make that decision themselves, based on their own spiritual path.
Judson opened its doors at the end of the 19th century, serving the poor, mostly italian, immigrants. In the 1960s, it opened its doors to the arts communities, had a help center for women seeking abortions and also had a medical bus for prostitutes.
We were at the front of Occupy Wallstreet (remember the Golden Calf? That was a Judson artist) and continue to be engaged in all manner of helping where help is needed.
Just saying...
Each individual Baptist community may serve as chosen, but the etiology of “Baptist” as a faith tradition the US is unchanged.
Of course, Baptists did not overtly state theirs was to be an all-white white faith, but presented as one in it’s early years.as
Take a look at Judson Memorial in Greenwich Village. There are Baptists and there are Southern Baptists, which is the branch that split off with the confederate states. And they are the ones that have made most of the nastiness.
Hi Rosalind, I too grew up in the South. but moved North as a young man and remained there for many years. We have that, and our current German residence, in common.
I don't know the answer to your question. It was a moment - an observation. I could not stand before that screen any longer, while the others in the room continued to study it.
Perhaps many or some of them left shortly after I did, but when I turned to go, the image of the group remaining there - front-lit before the flashing screen - was quite powerful.
Haven't the Germans, as a nation, been taught to face and acknowledge their horrific past, even in grade school, so it shall never happen again?
Yes, they have. I was just in Germany for two months visiting family in the Bonn area. I did not know of this exhibit but it would have been very difficult to view. There is still a shadow over the country for what took place during WWII. Last week at 10 pm, a knock on the door of our Airbnb from police, telling us we must evacuate immediately and leave a note on the door that we had left. a WWII bomb had been found 150 meters from our apartment, it was 500 kilos. They were breaking ground for a new home just around the corner. We left within 10 minutes and off to our daughter's home. About 900 bombs are found every year. There is still a great sorrow in this country. I don't know what Putin would want with a completely decimated country. A power play. I also gave to Timothy Snyder's U24. The past week or two, Russia has been relentlessly pounding Ukraine and I'm very fearful.
I agree....but it is the power that causes him to do what he does. He is evil clear through the bone!
It is not true power but the lack of the ability to see or feel love. True power does not need to take but gives from the fullness of a being connected to a higher source. Guided and protected by the light.
I think that predatory sociopathy, that which pleasures in subjugating and harming others, pretty much covers what is also called "evil". It's the monomaniacal self-absorption on sees in Putin ally, Donald Trump. While advising labeling of behavior rather than individuals a page on Healthline offers:
"There’s no standard list of sociopath signs, but the signs and symptoms of ASPD include a persistent pattern of disregard for others. For example:
> ignoring social norms and laws, or breaking rules at school or work, overstepping social boundaries, stealing, stalking and harassing others, and destroying property
> dishonesty and deceit, including using false identities and manipulating others for personal gain
> difficulty controlling impulses and planning for the future, or acting without considering the consequences
> aggressive or aggravated behavior, including frequent fights or physical conflict with others
>disregard for personal safety, or the safety of others
difficulty managing responsibilities, including showing up at work, handling tasks, or paying rent and bills
> little to no guilt or remorse, or a tendency to justify actions that negatively affect others
People with ASPD* generally show little emotion or interest in the lives of others. They might:
>come across as arrogant or superior, with firmly fixed opinions
>use humor, intelligence, and charisma to manipulate
>seem charming at first, until their self-interest becomes clear
People with ASPD* generally find it challenging to maintain friendships, relationships, and other mutually fulfilling connections. This difficulty may stem from traits, like:
>low empathy and emotional intelligence
>difficulty learning from mistakes
> lack of concern for the safety of others
> a tendency to intimidate and threaten in order to maintain control "
* AntiSocial Personality Disorder which is an official clinical diagnosis, while psychopathy and an sociopathy are not. I think excessive personal power often reinforces it (tends to corrupt). Certainly an all-consuming lust for power appears in that landscape.
💞
Yes.
Yes, MaryPat. That is not to say that there is no antisemitism. But for the past decade or more, there is a project of remembrance: the Stolpersteins, or stumbling blocks, are bronze blocks that are put into the pavement in front of the homes of the Jewish families who were murdered or fled or took their own lives. The story of each person is read allowed and attested to. This is not only in Germany, but also 30 European nations. Young people are encouraged to help in the research - a way to keep the memory of the holocaust alive.
They are powerful reminders ... Thanks for mentioning this, Rosalind.
Yet White nationalism increasing again in Germany.
It seems that white nationalism is an international virus. Oddly, the political party with the biggest mouth that is pushing back on immigration in Germany is the CDU - the Christian Democratic Union. Goes to show that Christian isn't a good badge to wear if one is interested in the advice of the Jewish rabbi of two millenea ago. Some of the biggest big-mouths are the most arrogant - and stupid as well because Germany is in need of more people in the workforce.
Hopefully the screen will remain front lit further exposing "mob boss" Trump and his band of thugs, cut out of the same racist cloth as you good people encountered growing up.
We seem to have a lot in common...
My uncle was a Klansman deacon of his Southern Baptist church in East Mississippi.
I've seen KKK pray before getting into robes & hoods. To whom are they praying? Surely not Jesus. If they are all Southern Baptists, does that make it a tax exempt Terrorist Org?
The problem is "Christ" which is an easy way to erase Jesus - Jesus, the Jewish rabbi. I go to great lengths to minimize christing Jesus, who is said to have said, "Why do you call me good? There is only one that is good and that is God." Christ makes an easy icon, halo and all. Put him on a pedestal and pray whatever you want. Go into what the rabbi Jesus had to say, and there's no room at the inn for him and the other outcasts he was close to.
YES!
"minimize christing Jesus"!!! Yes!!
I'm 100% Dutch, so I know well what my ancestors did to bolster their wealth through the slave trade. Not a proud moment for a whole country.
The Dutch West India Trading Company traded in everything, including human beings. There's some controversy over how much they were involved, but suffice it to say, they were active in moving people from Africa to the "New world" between the 1500s and the 1800s. They opened up the sugar market, which also used slaves. There were only minor protests in The Netherlands against it. So, the whole country, as many European countries were, was complicit in the practice.
Go to the coastal areas in the Netherlands where the ruins of the massive stone holding tanks that the Dutch built to hold the slaves for transport. Horrifying.
You make some good points about who might have been complicit. But, I have a less generous perspective, in that silence means complicity. Anyway, horrible part of Dutch history for sure. Most of the North East, around New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, had a lot of Dutch settlers, and the names of places have roots in the Dutch language. That same Dutch West Indies Trading Company sold off New York. If they hadn't, we all could have been speaking Dutch! See the book Island at the Center of the World by Russel Shorto for a great description of the history of that area.
Thanks, R Dooley, for sharing your perspective on the exhibits in Köln and for sharing Prof. Timothy Snyder's response.
I recommend to the attention of members of the LFAA community the Guardian's article on Prof. Snyder's fundraiser - not least because it contains a link to his Yale course on the millennium-plus history of Ukraine.
Holocaust 2.0
Yes, a genocide directed at ALL the people of Ukraine.
😣
Oh, we're well past 2.0 by now.
Quizt, a forum commenter, spoke of a fundraising effort by Timothy Snyder, the Yale prof. It works to purchase drone hunters to aid in Ukraine’s air defense. If you want to check this out, here’s the site: https://u24.gov.ua/shahedhunter
It is the same effort to which I referred above.
Sorry for being redundant If someone does not read the full expanded post, they may miss it.
Never hurts to reiterate.
What rises from your writing above, RDooley(NY), is the awareness of the inexplicable capacity within our human species towards destruction. How the horrors of violence and wars, which is only now transmittable world-wide as never before, has gone on for centuries. How do we evolve beyond this? What final straw brings transformation such that such vast costs and resources weigh into negotiation and mutual betterment vs. destruction and slaughter? I grieve for all of human history.
Just donated $100... Thanks for creating awareness of Timothy Snyder’s important fundraiser.
Snyder has a sub stack "Thinking About....." since the invasion started. Worth subscribing to..
Thank you for putting in this link. It is another thing I can do besides writing the Biden administration and the Scholz administrations asking them to help shield the Ukraine. I have also asked that non gas power generators be sent in huge numbers, and have made some energy suggestions as well, for energy sources that are not fossil fuel and underground. I have suggested that they develop a shield that can boomerang the drones back to where they came from, because of course, once people realize that the missiles they send out come right back to them, they will stop shooting them.
I have been reading about Kherson and the horrific experiences of people there. On a hopeful note, I read three articles that claim that 1) Foreign Affairs titled "Don't Panic About Putin: Even Desperate Leaders Tend to Avoid Catastrophe," which is saying Putin is unlikely to risk the negative reactions of everyone, including all of this allies and his people, to using nuclear weapons particularly since there is blowback.
2) The Atlantic has an article, "The Future of American Warfare is Unfolding in Ukraine" where the authors say that aiding countries without getting directly involved in combat is a better model for us, and that Ukraine has been much more effective than Afghanistan because it is the fight they are motivated to have and we are supporting with weapons, aid, and intelligence.
3) Yesterday Meduza said that the Ukrainian Intelligence has evidence that Russia is going to leave the area around the Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant. Today they say the Russians claim that Ukrainians were going to plant a bomb in Zaporizhzhia. If the Russians leave I assume and a neutral party takes over, that would hopefully make inroads into peace.
https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/11/27/head-of-ukraine-s-state-nuclear-power-company-on-zaporizhzhia-plant-russians-are-packing-their-bags
https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/11/28/fsb-says-it-prevented-a-series-of-terrorist-attacks-in-russian-controlled-zaporizhzhia
Thank you for this source material.
R Dooley, I just posted the link to U 24 on Facebook. Fingers crossed that it helps.
Thank you for this. I just donated, and am sharing in hopes some of my friends will do the same. ❤️👍
I’ve been trying for days to donate to this fundraiser but each time I try, with a credit card payment, I get a message that my donation was unsuccessful. Does anyone know why this would happen and how I could make it work?
I don't want to offend anyone, but when that issue happens to me, it is always because my card has reached it's credit limit. It happens to me frequently enough that I just automatically either enter my other card, or wait until I have made a payment. If you think that you are not near your credit limit, you had better call your credit card company and ask for recent charges on your card! Definitely check right away!
Gina, I had no problem using a credit card.I did not use apple pay It did take quite a while to process my donation, but it finally went through. Do you have another credit card you could try?
I don’t know what to tell you. I had no problem today when i donated. Perhaps try this the main link :
https://u24.gov.ua/shahedhunter