June 24, 2023

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

The Return of the “Great Disruptor” 

Donald J. Trump

Friends,

It is absolutely clear now to all but the most ideologically infected or close-minded automaton that the prosecution of President Donald Trump for various levels of malfeasance in regard to his handling of records seized by stormtrooper agents of Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is just the latest, and most egregious attempt to “get Donald Trump.” It comes after the implosion of the failed “Russia Hoax,” two utterly obscene impeachment efforts, a series of January 6 “show hearings” (which would make the East German Stasi or KGB envious!), and various harassment trials over purported sexual miscues (like the accusations against Justice Kavanaugh, financed by big Democratic Party billionaire Reid Hoffman).

Since Trump’s shocking and unsuspected election to the American nation’s highest office, virtual panic has taken hold not just of the Left, but also conspicuously of the establishment Republican elites, supposedly on the Right. For decades these elites, both the managerial Left and the establishment conservatives, have considered their sinecures and positions of power over the rest of us to be untouchable, and their authority theirs by right. They have formed a kind of self-perpetuating oligarchy, an exclusive Uniparty, and simple citizens, no matter whom they may be, have no right to question its right to control our lives, not just politically, but increasingly via the incestuous partnership with national and international finance corporatism (including the electronic media giants).

One only gets access or elevation to this new elite by making the proper obeisance, mouthing the “correct” messages, appealing to the “correct” financiers and corporate managers, and effectively accepting a certain template and a resultant narrative. There are, of course, some variations which are permitted: one can be a Republican or claim to be a “conservative,” and utter from time-to-time the banal and increasingly stale talking points which are supposed to indicate that a candidate is a “conservative,” or a “constitutionalist,” or “favors lower taxes.” Such affirmations usually occur during fevered election campaigns and are meant to assure and soothe restive voters that candidate X really does represent constituent wishes and will fulfill campaign promises once in office.

Of course, after election, the charade is over for nearly all those candidates, as they slide seamlessly into the embrace of the DC Swamp and begin to “suckle at the teats” of the managerial state. Few there are who dare oppose this immense cabal, for it has the power not just to exile dissenters but effectively silence them. Thus, we have the current example of a Marjorie Taylor Greene who is treated as something of a “wingnut,” mostly shunned by Republican elites.

This brings us ineluctably to the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, and the near-hysterical, laser-like, and abiding hatred of him. For it is understanding that hatred and those efforts to “get Trump” that in so many ways explain what is occurring in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election: the unceasing efforts using the courts, employing the media, using bare-knuckle politics, to discredit and defeat him, and possibly to imprison him, to stop him by any and all means….

And that is the major reason that Trump should be supported for 2024. Not because of his failings (about which more a little later), but because he represents existentially a real and present—identified—threat to the dominance of the managerial oligarchy which essentially controls our nation. And he does this almost uniquely, far more than any other candidate in the Republican stable (most of whom are considered “manageable” by the Establishment). The unhinged Left (i.e., almost the entirety of the Democratic Party) and Never Trump/Establishment elements of the GOP understand this threat more profoundly than even many of Donald Trump’s nominal supporters, and it literally scares the hell out of them.

I have argued before in several essays that I was not sure to what extent President Trump fully understood his role in what has become, in my view, an epochal and perhaps final battle for the future of the American nation. In 2016 I suggested that his positions came from his intuitions and his instincts, and weren’t really formed “political” or “ideological” perspectives.  They just seemed logical to him as a businessman as he viewed the Swamp from the outside. And that also would in part explain reasons why, when he became the GOP candidate and then president, he listened to Republican apparatchiks and attempted in his own way to bring about unity of the party, something traditionally that party candidates did. That effort, as we can state, was probably the most unsuccessful and destructive aspect in his first term, for many of his counsellors and appointments (e.g., Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, “Mad Dog” Mattis, Nikki Haley, et al) did their damnedest to undercut and stifle his announced positions and programs. And perhaps his own initial political naivete’ compounded matters, as well.

Yet despite some frustrated initiatives, some uncompleted programs, and frequent internal administration sabotage, Trump achieved something that no president in a century had accomplished: he forced the fangs of the fearsome managerial state out into public view for the first time.

Back in 2016 I first argued that Donald Trump’s role was akin to a “bull-in-china-shop,” to break the taboos of the Left and the managerial elites, and, at best, to force the maniacal establishment to lower its mask which for decades had occulted its actual intentions and its progressive infection of our society’s historic institutions with a virulent and fatal venom. That infection had been percolating for years, it had near total control of our educational and academic institutions, it largely dominated our entertainment industry, it controlled most of our media, and it had forced an iron-clad template on our politics…that is, until Trump came upon the scene.

As he spoke mostly off-script during the 2016 campaign, he gave voice to the fundamental views of regular citizens, that broad swathe of folks which Hilary Clinton called “deplorable,” and who now are denominated “MAGA.” Those rumblings, those views, previously had been mostly unexpressed on a national level; most citizens lacked a real means to do so. The few earlier major figures challenging the status quo, the progressivist Leftist “long march” through our institutions, had been sidelined, silenced, or exiled from the public square.

But as Trump spoke, he rattled cages, challenged establishment bromides, and questioned the progressivist template, whether he fully understood that or not. No matter that some of his rhetoric never made it into real programs or was stymied from within. The really significant factor was that he said it fearlessly from a national bully pulpit, that he made it acceptable to be a real opponent of the ongoing progressivist Leftist transformation, and that his presence unleashed an actual counter-revolution of sorts which, despite heightened persecution and concerted “cancelling,” continues. In that sense, Trump opened a Pandora’s Box which, since his election, the DC Uniparty has been unable to close, despite its frantic and heavy-handed stepped-up efforts.

Thus we come to the lead-up to the election of 2024 and the continued frenetic and unleashed efforts to stop Trump, not just by the fanatical Left but also by the self-satisfied Republican establishment. But unlike in 2016 or even 2020, that reaction is far more poisonous, widespread, and ingrained in the institutions of our society. And it has marshalled legions of Never Trumpers and those who have convinced themselves of oft-repeated refrains that: “Trump can’t win,” or “Trump will bring down other Republican candidates,” or “Trump is a moral reprobate and will lose the women’s vote.”

None of these accusations is actually true; nevertheless, they have taken hold even of some sincere persons on the Right. Any summary of polls over the past few months indicates that in addition to running away with the Republican nomination by huge margins, Trump can beat Biden in the general election. A RealClearPolitics average of all presidential polls (June 20, 2023) has Trump slightly ahead of Biden in an eventual face-off. He has a lead among independents (Economist/YouGov, June 9, 2023) and leads DeSantis among Republican women (Washington Examiner). More than that, an honest examination of the 2022 election reveals that Trump-supported candidates, contrary to the illusory claims bandied so widely about, were victorious in 236 contests out of 274 where he made endorsements, according to a Bloomberg News compilation (November 15, 2022)--more than a 6 to 1 margin of wins. He was not a drag on Republican candidates; rather, election mechanics and widespread rigging in key states played a far more significant role in a few high-profile GOP defeats. Those defeats cannot be laid at the feet of Donald Trump.

These arguments against Trump, then, collapse.

Other critics maintain that: “Trump has made promises he hasn’t kept,” or “Trump appointed and listened to bad advisors.” Even the staunchest Trump supporter can acknowledge that, even with the many positive things the Donald accomplished in his first term (e.g., especially three critical Supreme Court Justices), his selection of advisors and, at times, appointments, undercut much of his announced 2016 agenda. Yet, closely monitoring his campaign in 2023 and examining his Agenda47 items, he seems to have learned from mistakes made in 2017-2021.

The essential point is that Donald Trump is the one candidate the managerial Deep State really fears, and the reason for that is that he is the Great Disruptor, he endangers their hegemony and their seemingly unstoppable advance to globalist domination. In reality, his abiding support has little to do with whether he would advocate lowering taxes, or reducing foreign entanglements, or even completing a border wall—these are all very important, of course. But the often-unspoken reason that Trump supporters are so committed is that they know intuitively he is the wrecking-ball that is so sorely needed along the banks of the Potomac these days…as well as in Bruxelles and Davos. And with wrecking-balls, at times the process is messy and untidy.

No one else elicits more abject fear and loathing from our enemies than Donald Trump; no one else can bring on the necessary and probably final confrontation with the progressivist forces of the Leftist managerial state. The MAGA folks understand that the sooner this final confrontation occurs, the better are their chances of success. Other, more establishment-oriented candidates who propose a return to “normalcy,” only prolong our national agony while essentially allowing the rot to continue.

That is unacceptable and a recipe for the certain disappearance of the American nation as we have known it.

 

                                                June 8, 2023

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

A Birthday Salute to Dr. Clyde N Wilson –

On his 82^nd Birthday

Friends,

On Sunday, June 11, 2023, my dear friend and a man who is rightly called “the Dean of Southern Historians,” Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, will celebrate his 82^nd birthday. For some fruitful fifty-five of those years he has been at the forefront of efforts to make the history of his native region better known, and, as events and severe challenges to that history have happened at a dizzying pace, he has stood, like one of his admired historical figures, General Thomas J. Jackson, “as a stonewall” resisting the increasing insanity and madness of our age.

His various books, including the published multi-volume complete works of Southern statesman John C. Calhoun (University of South Carolina), books of essays, edited volumes, annotated bibliographies, and hundreds of articles give testimony to a tireless, indefatigable champion, intent on both mining and revealing the richness of Southern history and also resolutely defending it against powerful and virulent enemies, both nationally and amongst us. Unlike far too many of his fellow Southerners, Dr. Wilson has understood that the geographical region we call “the South” has had an important role not just in the 350 year existence of the land we call “America,” but in a very real sense in maintaining that Western Christian heritage inherited from original settlers, to the point of going to war to defend that precious patrimony.

I think it was when I was in grad school at the University of Virginia in the early 1970s that I first came across articles and essays by Clyde Wilson. I was already reading National Review and the quarterly, Modern Age (long before they went over to Neoconservative/NeoReconstructionism). Wilson, along with writers like Mel Bradford and Russell Kirk, for whom I served as assistant the year after securing my MA in history, wrote fairly regularly for what was called “conservative media.” Southerners were welcomed by such publications back then. Indeed, Kirk dedicated an entire issue of Modern Age (which he founded) to Southern conservatism (Fall 1958). Older Southern writers, essayists, and poets associated with the Southern “Agrarians,” men of stature like Donald Davidson, Andrew Lytle, and Cleanth Brooks, continued their labors in their twilight years.

When I returned to the United States after earning a doctorate at the University of Navarra, in Spain, and teaching for a while in Argentina in 1981, I began to reacquaint myself with writers and the culture of my homeland. Soon I was contributing essays to the Southern Partisan magazine and renewing my friendships with Mel Bradford and Russell Kirk.

Then, in 1990 I came across a book which made a profound and lasting impression on me: Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew (University of Georgia, 1990), by Clyde N. Wilson. In fact, the volume was an edited version of his Ph.D. dissertation presented at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1971. At that time UNC was hospitable to more conservative and traditional scholarship; not only Professor Wilson, but also former Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming, and my former co-worker at the North Carolina State Archives, Wilson Angley, all finished their graduate degrees there.

Pettigrew, a noted Confederate general who fell at Falling Waters during the retreat from Gettysburg, like Wilson and myself was a North Carolinian. Like most Southern boys who came of age during the “Civil War Centennial” (1961-1965) and a Tar Heel born and bred, I had some idea of Pettigrew’s exploits during the War. But I was unprepared for the wealth of detail which Wilson revealed. For indeed James Johnston Pettigrew was a man larger than life who, if he had lived, might have become one of the nation’s finest essayists and writers.  In Carolina Cavalier Wilson discusses at length Pettigrew’s “travel book,” Notes on Spain and the Spaniards (1861), which like English author Hilaire Belloc’s The Path to Rome, is far more than a simple travelogue. Like Belloc forty years later, Pettigrew possessed the ability to translate his observations into meaningful and eloquently descriptive paragraphs which in a profound sense soar above the printed page and in an impressionistic way speak of the continuity and grandeur of our Western culture. His understanding of Spanish traditions and religion have seldom, if ever, been matched by any American. And from a certain perspective, is there not in his exquisitely expressed, philosophical understanding and descriptions of Spanish society a veiled, analogous comparison to his own Southland?

A few years after acquiring a copy of Carolina Cavalier I was able to bring Clyde Wilson back to North Carolina. We had begun to correspond, and since I was chairman of North Carolina’s Annual Confederate Flag Day observances, I invited him to come to Raleigh and offer remarks in the old Senate chamber of the historic 1840 State Capitol. He was one of the distinguished guests of note we had over the years, including Don Livingston, Sam Francis, Paul Gottfried, and North Carolina Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, Jr.  And shortly afterwards, Pettigrew’s volume which had been out-of-print for well over a century, was brought out in a facsimile edition by the University of South Carolina Press (2010), with a new introduction by Wilson.

Another significant work which Dr. Wilson produced was The Essential Calhoun: Selections from Writings, Speeches, and Letters (2017), with an introduction by Russell Kirk, a valuable primer for students of the great South Carolinian who have been perhaps deterred by the daunting task of searching through the edited twenty-eight volumes!

Additional works include his several polemical volumes in “The Wilson Files”; his four books in the “Southern Reader’s Guide” series; From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition; Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture, and several significant published symposiums which he has edited. Dr. Wilson has also been the M. E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute, which specializes in the online publication of Southern writers and holding seminars on Southern themes. And he is the guiding spirit behind Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina, offering an outlet for Southern authors and their manuscripts.

During his thirty-two years as professor of history at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Wilson taught a wide variety of courses in history and directed sixteen doctoral dissertations. His legacy of scholarship and love for the history of his native region, thus, is carried on by those—and other—students who were privileged to study under him.  And by many thousands more who have read his books or attended his conferences, or been so fortunate as to call him a friend.

Would that in the midst of today’s vicious offensive against everything traditionally Southern there were more teachers and giants like Clyde Wilson.

There is a memorable passage in Donald Davidson’s magnificent poem, “Lee in the Mountains,” which in a way sums up Clyde Wilson’s resilience and heroically staunch defense of his beloved Southland:

            Young men, the God of your fathers is a just

And merciful God Who in this blood once shed

On your green altars measures out all days,

And measures out the grace

Whereby alone we live;

And in His might He waits,

Brooding within the certitude of time,

To bring this lost forsaken valor

And the fierce faith undying

And the love quenchless

To flower among the hills to which we cleave,

To fruit upon the mountains whither we flee,

Never forsaking, never denying

His children and His children’s children forever

Unto all generations of the faithful heart.

Then, let us wish Clyde Wilson a most happy and blessed 82^nd birthday, and ad multos annos! May your critical labors go on and continue to inspire us!

                                                May 29, 2023

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey 

Memorial Day, What It Means, and Why

Friends,

Observing Memorial Day 2023, like millions of other Americans I recall the sacrifices of those who selflessly gave their lives in far off places like Guadalcanal or the Hurtgen Forest or Anzio beach. Some remain in neatly kept cemeteries in France or other countries. In many cases, those men did not understand fully “why” they were engaged in conflict, save that their country had called them to do so. And, thus, it was their duty to do so.

Has this not been the case with most of the conflicts in which the American nation has been engaged since the end of the War Between the States?

As we look back now, we can point to Korea and Pearl Harbor when we were attacked, and thus, with some justification, we can mention those conflicts as, at least from that perspective, justified. But how many other conflicts—wars—can we say the same thing about, and not just the more recent “American police actions” (in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.) which remain extremely controversial in almost every respect?

What about the Spanish-American War, arguably a blatant case of American imperial power against Spain? And World War I? Increasingly, the evidence points to a monumental error, perhaps a calculated one, on our part to affect the outcome of a European war, with eventually disastrous consequences for everyone involved. Is it not justifiable to say that the victory of the Triple Entente (i.e., Great Britain, France, and Imperial Russia) and the resultant Draconian peace, hugely facilitated and made possible by wrongheaded American intervention, set the stage for the rise of world Communism and, ineluctably, the accession to power in Germany in fourteen short years of Adolf Hitler?

And more, what of the mound of evidence indicating that Franklin Roosevelt, eager to enter the war in Europe on Britain’s side, took actions that forced the Japanese into war, making the Pearl Harbor attack all the more likely. Were his actions, what historian Charles C. Tansill called “the back door to war,” so designed? Historians and authors still hotly debate those assertions.

Through it all, through all those wars and military conflicts, and more recently through Vietnam, and then the Balkans and the Middle East, American boys, fathers, sons, and brothers have done their duty, not usually asking difficult questions, but rather answering the call when issued.

Has this not been the case almost always?

In 1941 it was far easier to make the case that our young men must answer that call. After all, for whatever reason, we had been attacked, and we had no other option than to respond and respond forcefully, to mobilize and prepare for years of grueling and painful war.

In his letters to my mother he left behind [now in the NC State Archives], my father, Harry S. Cathey, writes from France and Germany in 1944 and 1945. Some of the words and designations are obviously in a code they had between them—he could not identify locations in the combat zone. And what comes through above all are two things: his sense of duty to his country and his abiding love for my mother—no real complaints about his conditions, although he does express the wish that he can taste her cooking again and, of course, the hope to see her soon.

A member of the 101^st Cavalry, my father was assigned to a Light Tank (“Stuart” type, from available information) and was involved in reconnaissance operations. On March 15, 1945, near Kaiserslautern in the Rheinland-Pfalz, his tank was hit directly by a German projectile. Dad, then piloting the tank, was seriously wounded, and his best buddy Dale Lackey, the gunner, was killed.

What has always affected me deeply and impelled me to count my blessings is that shortly before that attack, my father and Dale had traded positions: my father had been for several days prior the gunner, and Dale the pilot. They often switched positions—and they had done so only hours before the fatal incident. That trade had saved my father’s life, almost miraculously, just as it had taken Dale’s.

After the war and after my father got out of Walter Reed Hospital with a permanent back disability, he and my mother went to Granite Falls, North Carolina, to visit Dale Lackey’s widow. And several years later, when I came along, I received in his honor and memory the middle name “Dale.” Throughout my life, always, I carry that name of a man who seventy-eight years ago perished in a place where just as easily my father could have been. Thus, Memorial Day is always significant for me, for I honor especially my father’s service and also the memory of his buddy.

Some seventy-five years later, I decided to search out any living members of the family of my father’s compatriot, and I discovered that Dale Lackey had had a son named Dale, born December 8, 1944, who never got to see and know his father. I looked him up and found him in Statesville, North Carolina, and I contacted him. With emotion I told him about my middle name in honor of his father, and how that change in tank positions saved the life of my dad. As we talked by telephone I think we were both deeply moved as we realized how war can radically alter destiny and lives, not just of its direct participants but also of their families.

After seventy-five years I made a new friend whose friendship is both very special and spiritual.

Thus, Memorial Day is very significant for me, for I honor especially my father and his buddy Dale Lackey whose name I also carry.

Those men are called “the greatest generation,” and the reasons that are given are that they “saved us from totalitarianism,” or “they made the world safe,” and the list goes on. Much of that we would now say was a kind of very questionable, self-justifying propaganda…but always with an embedded, fragile, often obscure kernel of truth.

They were not political strategists or encumbered with high positions in government where long-range policies were made. Perhaps if they had been, things might have been different.

I like to think, as I reflect on Memorial Day and its deeper meaning, that above all those men did their duty, experiencing the pain of separation, the privations of war, the many necessary sacrifices, and oftentimes death. In this they leave their memory and honor to us all, unselfishly.

And, so, we honor them, we remember them—at times our hearts still ache as we recall them in our presence, as we recall listening to their voices and stories, and as we admired and continue to admire their hard-earned and often weary wisdom.

That is, in so many ways, the real “why” of Memorial Day.

[Small portions of this essay were used for articles in Chronicles magazine (May 25, 2020) and Roll Call: The Journal of the NC Military History Society, May 2019]

                                                      May 12, 2023 

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Ukraine, the Neoconservatives and the LGBTQ Global Agenda

Friends,

I pass on below three informative articles. They originate from BREIBART News, REUTERS, and BUSINESS INSIDER; and they detail the acceptance of same sex couples in the Ukrainian Army, and, indeed, the growing acceptance of even trans ideology in Ukraine (including statements made by V. Zelensky that he will “revisit” the issue). No doubt, the large degree of American control and influence has much to do with this. When our benighted nation, through its foreign policy tentacles, wants something done in our client countries (which Ukraine has become), then it gets done, whether the native population wants it or not. What matters for the US is if the Elites in those countries act when our globalists demand they act. 

No wonder that the Far Left pushes frenetic and unquestioning support for the ex-porno clown Zelensky's regime (at the expense of the Ukrainian people). Everything our foreign policy wonks touch and then dominate becomes rotten, infected by evil. Our record, whether in Bosnia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan...or now in Ukraine, is one of unrelieved destruction of traditional cultures and morality, religious faith and belief, and the imposition of a foul global hegemony, intolerantly pagan and Godless, all in the name of “liberal democracy.”

Hundreds of thousands of Christians, in some of the most ancient Christian communities in the world in Iraq and Syria, have been massacred or displaced by American military intervention or the use of American-armed client terrorist groups (recall the late and unlamented John McCain’s embrace of ISIS-affiliated terrorists in Syria).  The fanatical ideological zeal of the dominant foreign policy Neoconservatives to construct a secular world, controlled by an anti-Christian globalist elite (e.g. World Economic Forum, EU, NATO, UN, etc.), and their scarcely disguised hatred for Western Christianity are eerie carry-overs from—a reminder of—their internationalist Trotskyite roots.

Indeed, for many Neocons does not their secular globalism in a way actually invert the salvific promises made to Israel in the Old Testament, especially as many of the leading Neoconservatives have Eastern European and Russian Jewish descent—and lingering memories of “bad old Russia” and historic Christian prejudice?

A remarkable admission of this genealogy came in 2007, in the pages of the once-conservative National Review. Here one finds the expression of sympathies clearly imported from the onetime Far Left and presented by contributor Stephen Schwartz: “To my last breath, I will defend Trotsky who alone and pursued from country to country and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling to Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit that he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology.” (See Paul Gottfried, “Dancing on a Hero’s Grave,” Takimag.com, May 29, 2007.)

Over the decades since the 1960s, the Neocons migrated to a more conservative and anti-Communist viewpoint, supposedly due to their opposition to anti-semitic Stalinism, but actually in reality more because of their fear and hatred of nationalism. By the 1990s they were in virtual control of what has become known as “ConInc,” AKA Establishment “conservatism incorporated.” Older conservatives—paleoconservatives and Southern traditionalists—were exiled to the ineffectual margins.

In 2016 Donald Trump (perhaps not fully aware of his role) threatened that consensus, and for that reason he had to be savaged, denounced, impeached, defeated. He had, to quote Hillary Clinton, unleashed “the Deplorables,” the MAGA Nation, which proceeded to gain back swathes of the conservative grass roots.

Still, many Republicans, especially those most prominently in the DC Uniparty, remain joined at the hip with the fanatical Left in support of far too many shared nostrums, most especially a zealous globalism and disastrous American overreach, and inflicting new “civil rights” on the American citizenry (which were little more than new layers of immorality).

And the expansion of American hegemony globally brings with it the necessity on the part of newly-submissive client states to dismantle and discard their religious and moral traditions. Thus, our embassies around the world often symbolically fly “Gay Pride” flags, while our foreign aid packages are tied to abolishing or removing “inequities” against “oppressed” groups, such as homosexuals, women, and trans people…and all the while dozens of NGOs work feverishly on the ground to change views on a variety of questions: all in the name of implanting the fruits and benefits of “liberal democracy.”

Thus, we should not be surprised at what is occurring in Ukraine: growing support for same sex marriage, the advent of active LGBTQ organizations, and the rise of support for them. After all the United State foreign policy establishment was largely responsible for the February 2014 coup d’etat that installed an American puppet regime in Kiev. And, certainly, the price for becoming an American minion is implementing the agenda that whoring regimes must accept.

Read on.

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Ukraine Debuts LGBTQ ‘Unicorn’ Troops

https://www.breitbart.com/social-justice/2022/05/31/ukraine-debuts-lgbtq-unicorn-troops/

JOHN HAYWARD   31 May 2022 

Ukraine’s gay, lesbian, and transgender military volunteers are adding an official unicorn patch to their uniforms, right under the national flag.

 

The patch is meant as a rebuke to Russian rhetoric about “de-Nazification” and Russian rhetoric about excluding homosexuals in the military forces of former Soviet territories [e.g., Russia] The unicorn patch became popular with Ukraine’s LGBTQ community after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Since there were supposedly no gay soldiers in the Russian army, gays sarcastically chose the mythological unicorn as their symbol.

 

Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) reported last summer that Ukrainian soldiers began coming out in greater numbers in 2018, including those deployed to fight Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Even then, gay Ukrainian troops thought identifying themselves could help counter Russian propaganda about fascists running Kyiv.

 

“One of our aims is to expose the lies of Russian propaganda myths that claim Ukraine is being ruled by a ‘neo-Nazi junta.’ How could there be talk of neo-Nazis in an army that has many gay-friendly units, and in which gay and lesbian active-duty and veteran service members can come out without fear?” Viktor Pylypenko, founder of a group called Ukrainian LGBT Soldiers, told DW in June 2021.

 

Similar sentiments were expressed by “unicorn” troops who spoke to Reuters on Tuesday. They said there was “no aggression, no bullying” when they volunteered for front-line duty against the Russian invaders, and their commanders said homophobia would not be tolerated. “The thing I’m worried about is that in case I get killed during this war, they won’t allow Antonina to bury me the way I want to be buried. They’d rather let my mum bury me with the priest reading silly prayers … But I am an atheist and I don’t want that,” one of the unicorn soldiers said, referring to his transgender partner.

 

LGBTQ recruits say they are deeply concerned with the repression they would face from Russia if Ukraine is conquered. They point to the harsh treatment of gays in Donbas, where separatists aligned with Russia-controlled towns and cities before the massive Russian invasion began in February, and the vicious treatment of gays by Russia’s Chechen allies. Whatever complaints about discrimination gay Ukrainians had before the war, they seem to be in agreement that life under Russian rule would be worse.

 

“The LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine is in huge danger should Russia win. If Russia wins, it means darkness. There will be no freedom, no opportunity to be yourself, no rights for diverse communities,” territorial defense volunteer Vlad Shast told Forbes in March.

 

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Ukraine's 'unicorn' LGBTQ soldiers head for war

https://www.aol.com/news/ukraines-unicorn-lgbtq-soldiers-head-071702718-144234922.html

HORACI GARCIA  May 31, 2022, 9:42 AM

KYIV (Reuters) - As volunteer fighters Oleksandr Zhuhan and Antonina Romanova pack for a return to active duty, they contemplate the unicorn insignia that gives their uniform a rare distinction - a symbol of their status as an LGBTQ couple who are Ukrainian soldiers.

Members of Ukraine's LGBTQ community who sign up for the war have taken to sewing the image of the mythical beast into their standard-issue epaulettes just below the national flag. The practice harks back to the 2014 conflict when Russia invaded then annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, "when lots of people said there are no gay people in the army," actor, director and drama teacher Zhuhan told Reuters as he and Romanova dressed in their apartment for their second three-month combat rotation. "So they (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community) chose the unicorn because it is like a fantastic 'non-existent' creature."

Zhuhan and Romanova, who identifies as a non-binary person with she/her pronouns and moved to the capital from Crimea after being displaced in 2014, met through their theatre work.

Neither was trained in the use of weapons but, after spending a couple of days hiding in their bathroom at the start of the war, decided they had to do more. "I just remember that at a certain point it became obvious that we only had three options: either hide in a bomb shelter, run away and escape, or join the Territorial Defence (volunteers). We chose the third option," Romanova said.

Russia says its forces are on a "special operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and rid it of radical anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and its allies call that a false pretext for a war of aggression.

For Zhuhan and Romanova, their vocation gives them an added sense of responsibility. "Because what Russia does is they don't just take our territories and kill our people. They want to destroy our culture and... we can't allow this to happen," Zhuhan said.

Their first tour of duty around Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, about 135 km (80 miles) from the port of Odesa, changed their lives. They fought in the same unit and found it terrifying, Zhuhan contracted pneumonia, but, the couple says, their fellow fighters accepted them. "There was no aggression, no bullying... It was a little unusual for the others. But, over time, people started calling me Antonina, some even used my she pronoun," Romanova said. [....]

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Business Insider

A gay Ukrainian military couple engaged only days ago is being pulled apart to face the fear and heartache of combat alone

https://www.businessinsider.com/gay-newly-engaged-ukrainian-military-couple-facing-combat-fighting-russia-2023-4

Story by cpanella@insider.com (Chris Panella) • April 29, 2023

• A gay Ukrainian military couple that got engaged only days ago is heading off into combat. 
• Pasha, 21, and Vladyslav, 30, met a year ago and fell in love as war consumed their homeland.
• The couple told Insider that while war is tough, they haven't let go of hope.

Throughout the past year, thousands of Ukrainians have left their homes and former lives to fight against Russia's invasion. They've had to say goodbye to families and friends, unsure if they'd ever see them again. And as bloody battles rage on, Ukrainians have been forced to watch in horror as the war tears apart the country they once knew.

One couple has navigated much of the war with an added layer of concern: They're both fighting in the Ukrainian military. 

In this war that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, tragedy can strike in an instant. Pasha and Vladyslav, a newly engaged couple, are on their way into combat, but they won't be together. It's a tough time for the pair as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his campaign, though it faces struggles, to break Ukraine's defenses and enforce his unwanted vision for the country's future.

They worry for each other's safety, partially because they serve in separate battalions and areas. "It is very difficult," Vladyslav told Insider, but if they were able to see each other more, or possibly fight alongside one another, it'd make the days a bit easier. Currently, Vladyslav's trying to switch to Pasha's unit. "We'd like to do the job together," he said, but "it's hard to change battalions." 

The young gay couple began dating last year after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

They told Insider, courtesy of translator Maxim Potapovych, that they met on a dating app. That's pretty common for many modern couples, and at first glance, Pasha and Vladyslav's relationship is like any other.

They share pictures together on Instagram, some selfies of them making dinner and cuddling. In the past year, they've celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. Vladyslav turned 30 last September, with Pasha commemorating 21 just a few weeks later. "You're already 21 years old, what can I say..." he wrote on Instagram, "So as not to be dead by 22."

The harsh realities of their situation in a war-torn country are hard to miss.

One picture, posted by Pasha, shows the two holding hands while wearing their military uniforms. Another post details a vacation they took together. Pasha wrote, "These 10 days of my vacation have been better than half of my life before the war! You know when you weren't around before, I didn't care about life or death, whether to be shot or shoot."

Just days before the pair deployed for combat operations, Pasha and Vladyslav got engaged. Pasha said there was sort of an ultimatum in play: it was either get engaged or leave one another. They chose to stay together, and they celebrated as much as possible before the war called them back.

On Friday, their last day in Kyiv, Pasha and Vladyslav told Insider it's been difficult to fight in the war because it constantly tries to pull them away from one another.  And the combat is intense, no matter how much time you've spent on the battlefield. Pasha says the fighting feels like entering a "volcano." He said that "if he could describe it simply," he would say that a "normal, city person" has suddenly been thrown into a new environment where the heat, pressure, and sweat of battle can be overwhelming. 

Pasha joined the military in 2021 and is now a gunner. Vladyslav joined last year. Though neither told anyone they were gay, Pasha recalled experiencing homophobia and discrimination from the other soldiers in his first few weeks at a training camp. Ukraine freely admits gay soldiers, something that would never happen in Russia.

Before Russia invaded, Ukraine's stance on LGBTQ rights was murky. Gay marriage and adoption weren't legal, and although they still aren't, President Volodymyr Zelensky has since promised same-sex civil partnerships could be revisited after the war. There was also varying public opinion on gender and sexual orientation, although anti-discrimination laws in Ukraine offered some protection, and homosexual relations weren't legal in Ukraine until 1991. 

The atmosphere, especially in the military, has improved, the couple told Insider. There's a mutual respect of sorts, a realization that they're all fighting for the same cause regardless of sexual orientation.

That said, LGBTQ personnel don't yet have the same benefits as their heterosexual counterparts. When Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun submitted a draft to legalize same-sex partnership in early March, she noted that if an LGBTQ person is injured in combat, their partner can't make decisions about their medical treatment. 

Pasha and Vladyslav have talked about this issue, too.

In a post for LGBTIQ Military — an organization of Ukrainian LGBTQ active military members, veterans, and volunteers fighting for equal rights — the couple expressed their support for legalizing same-sex partnerships. They wrote that while they want to be able to marry, have children, and live happily together, there are also more immediate concerns about not being legally recognized as a couple. If one of them is injured, the other has no say in their hospitalization and care. If one dies, the other won't be able to claim their body, they said. 

It's a stark reality of both the war and LGBTQ rights. But Pasha and Vladyslav said they're hoping for a better future for themselves. They see the war as a fight against how Russia oppresses, how it treats its LGBTQ people — "full of discrimination, killing activists," Vladyslav said. 

Winning the war would mean winning freedom, both for Ukrainians and LGBTQ people like Pasha and Vladyslav. When Insider asked about the coming months of combat and how the couple is feeling, Vladyslav held Pasha closely and said: "We strongly believe Ukraine will win."