Home
Articles
Subscribe for free
Book Store
 Research Cycle

Order Jamie's books online with Paypal or a credit card

Vol 20|No 7| March|2024


St. Andrew's Church — 18th-century church sitting
on a hill overlooking one of Kiev's oldest neighborhoods.
© J. McKenzie

So what?

 by Jamie McKenzie
(about author)
When Hitler began the invasion of Poland and his march through Europe, there were many in the USA and Britain who asked, "So what? What does this have to do with me?"



Some of these same people ended up dying when German bombs fell upon London or when they joined the army to storm the beaches of Normandy a few years later. Much of the world came to understand the threat posed by Hitler, his allies and his manic drive to enlist, capture or subjugate all of his neighbors.

Sadly, it took the bombing of Pearl Harbor to convince some that what happened to Poland might happen to the USA.

The cost of appeasement was immense.

When some people say "So what?" it is more of a statement than a question, an act of defiance, of disregard. They are showing disinterest and rejecting any need to explore or understand.

Many years later we see history repeating itself, as many act as if the death of Alexei Navalny has little to do with them and ask "So what?" They watch Putin's cruel and criminal invasion of the Ukraine and shrug it off. "So what? What does this have to do with me?"

This attitude reminds me of Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman proclaiming "What, me worry?"


This photo of Alexei Navalny was taken By Evgeny Feldman
with a Canon EOS-1D X, CC BY-SA 4.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=145431759

It must please Putin to see isolationist sentiment thriving in the USA as some politicians call for an abandonment of both the Ukraine and NATO.

If the Ukraine falls and Putin extends his efforts into Hungary, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria, how will that impact life in the USA?

Putin the Hun

Cruel
And criminally insane
A pathological liar
And ruthless killer
Putin sends Russian boys
And Russian girls
To an early grave
Along with Ukrainian boys
And Ukrainian girls
Mothers
Fathers
And grandmothers
His dreams of empire
Blinding him to human pain
Human suffering
And human loss
He is a thug
A serial killer
And a monster
Like Hitler before him
Attila the Hun
And Benito Mussolini
He will bring us all to the brink
Of World War III
To the Abyss
And to the Apocalypse
Now



What happens to the Ukraine matters to us all. John Donne said it well:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
In his New York Times article about Putin and Mr. Navalny, Serge Schmemann points out that "Mr. Navalny had denounced the invasion of Ukraine from the outset. 'This is a stupid war which your Putin started,' he told a court in Moscow."

And now Putin's major opponent is dead!

FNO Press is applying for formal copyright registration for articles.
Unauthorized abridgements are illegal.




Laptop Thinking and Writing

Copyright Policy: Materials published in The Question Mark may be duplicated in hard copy format if unchanged in format and content for educational, nonprofit school district and university use only and may also be sent from person to person by email. This copyright statement must be included. All other uses, transmissions and duplications are prohibited unless permission is granted expressly. Showing these pages remotely through frames is not permitted.

FNO Press is applying for formal copyright registration for articles. Unauthorized abridgements are illegal.