IN A WORLD OF PUTINS BE A ZELENSKY

That all-caps exhortation has been taunting me from the sign in front of the Kemble United Church since late February. Kemble is one of those cross-roads country hamlets that sprung up in the pioneer days. The pick-up trucks are big and black, and the tractors are green and yellow. It’s home to the oldest functioning chapter of the Women’s Institute, an interesting historical factoid. The Kemble WI built that beautiful lookout just south of town where Grey Road 1 turns down to the bay. The folks are hard-working regular people, many of whom can trace their local roots back multiple generations. I’ve taught a lot of their kids over the years. Until recently you could buy a house at an affordable price. I can think of a few that changed hands for under 100k as recently as five years years ago. Those days are gone. By and large, they’re folks more interested in the livestock report than the international news, and insofar as they consume any, it’s most likely courtesy of CBC News. So what would they know about Putin or Zelensky? They would know that Putin is a tyrant, a dictator who launched a totally unprovoked war on the peaceful and prosperous democracy next door. They would know Putin’s thugs mostly target civilian infrastructure, especially kindergartens and hospitals. They would know that Putin’s plans to seize the capital and remove the democratic government were thwarted by the fierce resistance of the Territorial Defence Units rallied by Zelensky himself. They would know these bold commoners, mostly actors, artists, and writers who never before picked up a weapon, put the run to Putin’s criminal thugs. They would know that Ukraine is winning the war. And while they’d never vote for Justin Trudeau in a million years, when they hear him promise away another hundred million of their tax dollars because the heroic Zelensky needs more weapons, well, they figure it’s a worthwhile cause. When you get your news from CBC, you never have to trouble yourself with names like Nuland or Pyatt and their role in the coup that took down a democratic government in Ukraine. You never have to trouble yourself with the disturbing idolatry of Stepan Bandera among Ukrainian nationalists. You never question that latest hundred million dollar gift of weapons to Ukraine, a gift that has precisely zero chance of ever getting to the front lines, because CBC forgot to mention that the Ukrainian army ceased to be a cohesive fighting force in the first twenty-four hours of this war. So ya, under the circumstances, that sign in front of the Kemble United Church almost makes sense. In a make-believe world threatened by evil tyrants, we all want to be Zelensky.