How Zelensky Came to Embody Democracy

[Nevilledog]

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Yoni Appelbaum
@YAppelbaum
“The man who might not live to see the next week, who really just needs a few more airplanes to get through the day, is also the only global leader to have expressed a vision of what the future might look like.” @FranklinFoer on Zelensky

theatlantic.com
How Zelensky Came to Embody Democracy
The admiration for the Ukrainian leader that’s obvious and pervasive on social media is both genuine and a form of wish fulfillment.
1:42 PM · Mar 16, 2022

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/zelensky-congress-speech-no-fly-zone/627080/

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https://archive.ph/bsbs5

This morning, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress from his desk in Kyiv, bitter thoughts must have crossed his mind. Not so long ago, Donald Trump wouldn’t let Mike Pence attend the Ukrainian president’s inauguration. Zelensky spent the first year of his administration begging for an invitation to the White House that never arrived. While members of Congress greeted him rapturously, Zelensky put his hand over his heart, but he must have also thought to himself: It would have been nice to have received this love a bit sooner.

Zelensky’s hovering visage presented a sharp contrast with the institution he was addressing. The Ukrainian president styles himself as a general defending democracy’s eastern front against the onslaught of authoritarianism. This morning he wore a green military T-shirt. The U.S. members of Congress, in their suits and ties and dark blazers, reflected their sclerotic institution, constrained by antiquated rules, incapable of shoring up a democracy that’s beginning to crumble.

That contrast is a reason for the heroic status that Zelensky has achieved in the U.S. and Western Europe. With his rhetorical approach and personal style, he’s evinced something that Western publics crave deeply for themselves, a democratic example that’s badly missing. Through his wartime performance, he has demonstrated to countries that have slipped into rancor how to successfully deploy persuasion to build consensus without succumbing to accusation. Despite having every reason to hate Russians, he uses his videos to reason with them. The admiration for Zelensky that’s obvious and pervasive on social media is both genuine and a form of wish fulfillment.

The telling moment in his congressional address came when he invoked—but never cited by name—Martin Luther King Jr.: “‘I have a dream.’ These words are known to each of you today. I can say I have a need. I need to protect our sky. I need your decision, your help, which means exactly the same. The same you feel when you hear the words ‘I have a dream.’”

*snip*

[NJCher]

1. Zelensky is showing the world

How important and precious democracy is.

Tonight President Biden remarked on how we’ve spent a billion on Ukrainian defense. The lesson alone would have been worth a billion.