“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.  Now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”

– Neville Chamberlain, September 30, 1938

(While the Munich Pact would become synonymous with “appeasement,” some historians believe that since the German and Italian air forces were twice as strong as the combined British and French airpower in September 1938, Chamberlain’s agreement gave the British military valuable time to bolster its defenses to ultimately defeat Hitler.)

Ukraine is under attack, and the slactivists are out in force.  Before criticizing them, though, it’s probably worth acknowledging the possibility that tagging #istandwithukraine on my Insta might have an actual significant impact.  As some columnist noted, Putin is far from the first despot to randomly attack another country, but he may be the first who’s at the helm of a nation “deeply dependent on international commerce.”  As such, the actions of various virtue-signal-seeking companies can actually have a huge impact.  Boeing’s response, for example, has been . . . modest.  Could the pressure of a million Insta / FB tags make a difference?  Perhaps.  Some sports organizations have banned Russians, but world #1 Medvedev will still be playing at Wimbledon right now, which I consider absolutely unacceptable.  In conclusion, I should probably stop criticizing and start tagging.

But what’s going on right now is not getting it done.

The particular target of my annoyance is Orca running, a local running company.  They’re putting on a virtual run to aid Ukraine.  Plunk down your ten bucks, and they’ll send it on to charities ostensibly aiding Ukrainians.  The first problem is that there is an additional entry fee that goes to runsignup.com of about $2.77, so more than 20% of the money won’t even go to the charities.  Also a $10 donation is really extremely modest.  Don’t get me wrong.  If you’re poor or young or a grad student or something, I think it’s awesome that you’re giving $10.  But if you’re a runner running in $150 running shoes and a $100 Orca top and spending $$$ on race entry fees and so on and so forth, I feel like we can probably give a bit more than $10.  Of course, no one should feel pressure to support a foreign military if they don’t want to.  Or any cause.  I just feel like a $10 donation is a virtue signal for the well off, not a meaningful contribution.  But again, maybe this type of signaling makes a difference in terms of the behavior of powerful international companies that are currently just not doing as much as they could be.

I am in the middle of reading Last Witnesses, which is a collection of first person sources from the German invasion of the Soviet Union.  Since Ukraine is in the West, most of the sources are from Ukraine and Belarus.  It’s disturbing and much darker than fictional accounts of WW2 that I’ve read, which of course can be quite dark.  There are no “good” or even not so bad German soldiers in these accounts.  I feel like what is happening right now with the current invasion is likely similar in terms of impact to children as what happened nearly 100 years ago.

If you feel like donating, some links are here.  For me, China and Russia to a lesser extent represent the greatest international threats to our children’s happiness and freedom and our own national integrity.  China, naturally, is fully supportive of Putin’s invasion.  I can’t see Ukraine winning this.  So what happens next?  Moldova?  And then what?