Ukrainiana

Revisiting Counterpunch's Ukraine 2004 Coverarge

Counterpunch may be right about the right on many counts. But the way these pundits sided with Yanukovych in 2004 just didn't feel right to me. Nor did it feel left enough to me: Under my microscope, Yanukovych clearly represented capitalism's ugliest live-form.

During my Maidan off-duty hours, I nearly choked with the bitchy bias in Chad Nagle's reports. It was my right to freedom and better living standards that got counterpunched. Welcome to the left's symmetrical response to FOX News!

While hundreds of thousands of us were peacefully freezing our asses out on Maidan, my only thought — aside from visions of a Tiananmen-style crackdown — was for Chad Nagle to get the fuck out of my country. And as he kept misleading the world by picturing me and my freedom business through the prism of his knee-jerk anti-Americanism, I fantasized about a Tomahawk missile carefully planting itself in his hotel apartment. (Ditto The Guardian and Antiwar.com.)

Had Bush's re-election depressed him so badly that the only action plan he had for exposing the imperialist in Bush was by pampering one in Putin?

I wonder if Counterpunch has improved its Ukraine coverage. I hope so. Enough time has elapsed for a balanced judgment to be passed on both Yushchenko and Yanukovych. If today somebody told me that Yu and Ya deserve each other, I’d almost have to agree. (That doesn’t mean that, at the end of the day, I feel as fucked up as Ya fancies it.)

What I would not agree with is that self-serving bias, whether right-wing or left-wing, can further a good cause.

So what do we do folks? I’d say it’s time to get rid of this mental straight-jacket we try out with every major depressive episode. It’s time to realize democracy is a full-time job. It's up to us freedom-loving, gutsy folks to put the spark back into the democracy department.