(Dobbs) I Can't Believe What We Now Must Believe
What once didn't seem possible has been unfolding right before our eyes.
I find myself asking more and more, even if there’s no one around to answer, “Can you believe it?” Look in just about any direction right now and the question comes up.
Can you believe that after almost 80 years of peace, Russia marched into Ukraine and Europe now has war?
But can you believe that an outgunned Ukraine is fighting back, which might not stave off Russian subjugation but which is slowing and putting the hurt on Russia’s advance?
This photo of a dead Russian soldier by The New York Times’s Tyler Hicks speaks to Russia’s losses as it invades Ukraine
Can you believe that American intelligence, which got everything so wrong twenty years ago with the American invasion of Iraq, has gotten everything so right with the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Can you believe that Vladimir Putin today has just raised the stakes, putting his nuclear forces on alert and putting the whole world even more on edge?
Can you believe that although Putin flat-out lied every step of the way about his plans to invade a sovereign nation, a notable number of right wing Americans have taken Russia’s side, including praise for Putin from our feckless former president?
Can you believe that a country that brazenly violates fundamental human rights and freedoms within its own borders, and now within others’, yesterday said with a straight face after Facebook fact-checked Russian media disinformation, that Facebook “violates fundamental human rights and freedoms?”
Can you believe that there are QAnon followers who claim that the invasion of Ukraine is part of the global war on sex traffickers, and that surveys show there are roughly 40 million believers in the conspiracy theories of QAnon?
Meanwhile….
Can you believe that after a pandemic ravaged and raged through this nation to the tune of almost a million deaths, nearly six million worldwide, we still have citizens who call it a hoax?
Can you believe that there have been Americans who, despite convincing statistics about vaccines’ effectiveness, not only have refused to get their shots but have actually attacked those who’ve advocated for them?
Can you believe that after most of us at the outset of the pandemic’s lockdown figured it would end in a month or two— then, a month or two after that (and then, a month or two after that)— now, two years into it, although it is not surging, it’s still a threat?
Meanwhile….
Can you believe that on January 6th last year in Washington, self-described patriots, who once strongly stood on the side of the police and the principle of law and order, attacked the police and assaulted American democracy?
Can you believe that there are high elected officials who have defended them and that one of our two major political parties has even minimized the insurrection, approving a resolution that called it “legitimate political discourse?”
Meanwhile….
Can you believe that even now, more than fifteen months after Joe Biden won the election, “Trump Won” t-shirts were being sold this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando?
Can you believe that with millions of Trump’s disciples still buying into that Big Lie, and with Republicans in some states still actually trying to decertify the 2020 election, a respected publication like The Week had to ask on its cover, “Can democracy survive polarization, the Big Lie, and the next election?”
A friend, taking stock of the mess we’re all in, wrote me asking his own ominous if rhetorical question: “We are in the 21st Century, so why are murderous thugs and amoral narcissists allowed to function at the heads of governments?” There is no answer that makes sense.
Can you believe it has all really come to this? We must brace ourselves for some very dangerous years.
If Russia can run roughshod over a weak neighbor, are there others in its crosshairs and if so, could the United States be sucked directly into another war? If some Americans are willing to speak against America in the middle of a face-off with another superpower, is there ever hope for consensus again in a crisis? If unpatriotic politicians would refashion the fundamentals of our democracy to hold on to power, might we end up with one party in perpetual control? If citizens spurn science in favor of conspiracy theories, can we ever expect the end of the destructive epoch of “alternative facts.” If social media grows as a source for many of our countrymen of evil unsupportable lies, but millions of malleable Americans buy them, do we have a prayer ever again of information we all know we can trust?
In the good old days, there were border disputes and regional disagreements and cultural conflicts amongst our allies and adversaries alike. But tanks weren’t dispatched and bombs weren’t launched.
In the good old days, we had fierce debates here at home over facets of foreign policy, especially over America’s foreign wars. But even if we spoke with scorn about our nation’s leaders, we didn’t speak with praise about our nation’s adversaries.
In the good old days, we respected our medical caregivers and usually not only accepted their prescription for treatment but got better because of it. Differences of opinion about the best course to take were medical, not political.
In the good old days, the crisis of confidence during the dark days of Watergate put the stability of the presidency in peril. But thanks to respect across the political spectrum for our Constitution, only the presidency was threatened, not the democracy.
In the good old days, what we’re seeing now didn’t seem possible.
But today, it is. It’s happening right before our eyes.
There is no simple solution to any of it. In the war, the sanctions already are hurting Russia, but the outcome will likely be decided in the streets and in the skies over Ukraine, not in the pocketbooks of the long-suffering Russian people.
It is encouraging though that today is a milestone of a moral victory: 31 years ago, after Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush was able to announce, “Kuwait is liberated, Iraq’s army is defeated.” I covered that war and remember my relief, thinking despite the overwhelming strength of the United States, “Can you believe it!” In the spirit of hope, what better news than for President Biden soon to be able to say the same about Ukraine, and for the rest of us to say, “Can you believe it!”
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.