Fear for the Future
Like so much of the last decade, it feels like several years have gone by in a matter of minutes. Ukraine is facing an invasion on multiple fronts, Vladimir Putin is making not so veiled threats about nuclear war, and battles are unfolding in front of the world, the footage of which is freely available to anyone who can google. Shaky camera phone images show explosions, huddled masses in underground train stations, and Russian military vehicles moving through abandoned streets. I want to look away, but like many I’m transfixed. I watch one video of helicopters swooping from the sky to attack an unseen target in the distance. As I stare in disbelief all I can think is “That looks like where I live”.
Of course, my little patch of Bavaria is many hundreds of kilometres away from Ukraine. I’m not on the front line and to all intents and purposes, I’m safe. Yet I can’t shake that image. Looking at the streets of Kyiv, they’re not so far removed from the cities of Germany. All of a sudden I wave of dread comes over me. “This could be us, fuck, this is us”. The invasion of Ukraine changes everything we knew about the world. Europe is at at war, if you think this is only about Ukraine you’re either stupid or you’re not paying attention.
In moments like this I become addicted to news in a way I know is entirely unhealthy, but at the same time I can’t do anything else. I doom scroll, I refresh live updates and I look for something, I’m not sure what. Perhaps I’m looking for reassurance, for someone to explain how this will all play out in a plausible way that will reduce my anxiety. However, all I seem to find is the same divisions. There’s the Putin apologists, mitigating at an industrial level, motivated less by the need to explain and rather more to boost their contrarian credentials. There are more tweets about sanctions, their effectiveness or lack thereof. The people who during Brexit became trade experts, then pivoted to virologists during the pandemic, suddenly now show their international banking expertise and how to effectively bring the pain of sanctions to the door of Russian leaders.
I’m not an expert on any of these things, I don’t understand how sanctions work, I don’t know how you deal with a man who would threaten NATO countries and threatens Europe with “consequences that you have never encountered in your history”, but our social economy runs on opinion and hot-takes, why should ignorance stop me? I don’t know, but it does. Maybe hot-takes aren’t my thing, but I could play the blame game that so many find so appealing at the moment. Much of social media looks like the the Spiderman meme as we all point at each other and say “Well, if it wasn’t for (insert focus of blame here)”. Frankly, I don’t see how this helps anything, the time to apportion blame will come, but I’m not really sure now is that time. However, the wheels of the social media need to keep turning, and as they do, more bombs fall.
I want to be optimistic, I want to believe there is way out of this mess, but I honestly can’t see it. There’s a reason that this is happening now, in 2022. We’ve never been more divided and Putin knows it. It’s not just the politicians that need to come together, we as the people of Europe need to come together because what we face, what we could all face, is beyond our worst nightmares. The people of the Ukraine are living that nightmare today, I hope we can have one ounce of their courage should it be our turn next.
To support the Ukraine, please consider some of the many options found in the Twitter thread below:
