Category: Politics

A case study of a church doing the work of communal repentance

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of communal repentance, particularly as we work against idolatry, nationalism, and racism. Now, I want to give a concrete example of what a modern-day act of communal repentance might look like; not just a performative act but one that takes ownership of the past and seeks to make amends. In Plough (a quarterly magazine), Pastor Helmuth Eiwen wrote an article titled “The Sins of the Fathers,” sharing why and how he led his Austrian church to publicly repent of anti-Semitism past and present. (While I am unsure if Eiwen is specifically familiar with Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, his articles accurately reflects the same points that I shared in my blog post.) I encourage you to read his whole piece, but in the meantime I will quote a few parts: 

“Forgiveness of sins, in the sense of the cleansing and salvation of the sinner, is a personal experience between God and the penitent. No one can step in to be cleansed or forgiven in the sinner’s stead. Yet the Bible describes another important aspect of guilt: the reality that the so-called “sins of the fathers” may have lasting negative results. In other words, even if we do not bear the sins of our ancestors, we may not be able to escape the consequences of their actions….Such an inheritance may not be personal but collective; God’s history is marked not only by relationships and covenants with individuals but with whole groups – families, cities, tribes, and entire peoples or nations…

“The ongoing aftereffects of “sins of the fathers” may be temporal: political oppression or subjugation, or economic woe. They may manifest as wars, famines, and natural catastrophes, or as pandemics and plagues. Just as grave, if less visible, are the spiritual fruits of such sin – the blindness that can lead to unbiblical or faulty theologies being passed from one generation to the next; they may be wrongheaded (and even deadly) traditions, worldviews, and attitudes. Antisemitism is one such malign legacy; its insidious invincibility has poisoned countless souls and continues to do so. Ungodly decisions, stipulations, and legal decrees by government officials or clerical leaders preserve injustice.

“When a dark cloud hangs over a city, region, or a church, its origin does not matter: it will hinder the breaking through of the gospel. More often than not, it will show itself in splits and divisions within Christendom that can be traced back to instances of persecution, hatred, and ostracism.“

In the late 1990s Pastor Eiwen realized that the legacy of anti-Semitism had left a curse on his small Austrian town that had left it strangely resistant to receiving love and grace from God. Interestingly enough, the most recent Atlantic cover article makes a similar point, that centuries-old acts of evil can have tangible, measurable impacts in our modern world: “[William Bernstein says] You can actually predict anti-Semitism and voting for the Nazi Party by going back to the anti-Semitism across those same regions in the 14th century. You can trace it city to city.” Wow! I am reminded of the ways that you can still see the tangible effects of redlining, urban renewal, or other past racist policies in many American cities today.

As Pastor Eiwen and his church wrestled with the implications for their specific city in Austria, they realized: 

“We cannot repent on behalf of somebody else. But we can identify with them and ask God to lift the curse – the negative consequences – that we are suffering under; we can even be so bold as to pray that he turns it into a blessing.…Daniel does not pray [in Dan 9], “Lord, forgive our fathers, cleanse them of their guilt.” That is something they could only do themselves. When Daniel prays for forgiveness, he is asking God to lift today’s curse. And so we too pray for God to break today’s curse so that the chain of destructive consequences of “the sins of the fathers” might come to an end – and so that there will finally be real freedom, once and for all….Daniel was given a clear recognition regarding the sins of his ancestors. He did not seek to remove himself from them, sweep them under the rug, or say they were not his business. Rather, he clearly acknowledged and named sins, and confessed them “before God’s countenance.” He could do this because he knew he was a member of a people whose ancestors had sinned, and he himself was thus ready to bear the consequences of their sin in his exile – perhaps almost as a guarantor for them.“

Eiwen emphasizes that confession is just one part of communal repentance. 

“A confession of identification is a beginning, but to bear fruit, it must lead to concrete action on the part of individuals and the community at hand – to deeds that demonstrate the authenticity of the confession by bringing about real change. Examples might include the correction of false theologies; reconciliation, which encourages new behavior and new attitudes; compensation, which, to some degree, returns what has been stolen; and the solidification of new attitudes and paradigms by the passing of new insights to the next generation. For repentance by identification to be fruitful, it must include as many of the individuals and groups who represent the collective body in question as possible. Not only solitary men and women, but whole families, congregations, churches, neighborhoods, cities, and peoples, must be willing to identify with the guilt of their fathers and step into the fissure.“

For Eiwen’s church, they felt led to take a number of actions: 

  • Learned about the guilt of their city, particularly in mistreatment of Jews
  • Gathered church leaders for a prayer
  • Confessed ancestor’s guilt as their own, and asked God’s forgiveness
  • Implored God to turn his face to the city once again, and turn the curse into a blessing
  • Do a public act of external remorse, which involved seeking out Jews that had left Wiener Neustadt and seeking forgiveness and connection

Eiwen closes:  

“One remarkable fruit of this process of “repentance by identification” has been an increased openness to the gospel in Wiener Neustadt. As far as we have been able to observe, God has revitalized not only our congregation’s spiritual life but also that of other churches in the city. Many spiritual leaders and congregants gather regularly to pray for revival. I do not know what the future will bring, but I can say this: the spiritual atmosphere has changed, the cloud has lifted, and the skies above Weiner Neustadt are now open to God.“

I continue to be immensely inspired by Pastor Eiwen’s article and recommend you read it. But in the meantime, it leaves me with many questions:

  • What are the open wounds still open in America that must be repented of? Or let’s get more local — What about in Central Pennsylvania? What about here in Carlisle? And what would repentance look like? 
  • Of what communal sins should I and my family and church identify ourselves? Of what communal sins are we still guilty of? Are there ancestral or generational curses that we must become aware of in order to break cycles of brokenness? 
  • What if the revival that we Christians are seeking in America can only come through communal repentance? How does one even being to help American Christians see the truth about history when they are enthralled by semi-fascist narratives of a perfect nation under God that can do no wrong? 
  • Is communal repentance a “once-and-done” activity, or something that must be pursued for decades (or even longer)? How can you know when a communal crime has been sufficiently repented of? And how far back do we go; must modern-day Italians repent of the crimes of the Roman Empire?
  • How big a community is necessary to truly do communal repentance? Ideally the entire social group that is implicated in a crime would be willing to repent, but if that’s not the case, is it enough for just one church to do communal repentance? One family?

These are not easy questions. But they are important ones. I hope that you’ll join me in continuing to wrestle with them.

Race, Patriotism, and the Nation State

[Originally published on my old blog on April 25, 2011, this essay was written partially in response to a class assignment. I have reposted it here without edits.]

Yesterday I was sitting in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, Italy. It was a warm and lively evening, as hundreds of people milled about with their beer and gelatos. Meanwhile, the dominating white edifice of the Duomo Cathedral hung over everything, its stained glass windows lit from within. My attention was distracted from it, however, by the bright rocket/helicopter toys that street vendors would launch into the night sky to attract the lustful eyes of children. Over and over the toys flew through the air like shooting stars…(or like flares announcing the start of war? I can see the soldiers leaping from their trenches into the maw of the machine guns, their blood spilling upon the soil that is undistinguishable but for the fact that it is their soil, for their nation…).

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of race and nationhood. The mythology of the Romantics and fascists alike is powerful: that people form discreet groups or ethnicities based upon a homeland (and therefore usually also a language, history, and set of stories). Germany for the Germans, France for the French, Italy for the Italians, Israel for the Jews… The implication of this is that these people groups each have an essential, eternal, almost spiritual identity, not an artificial one created through normal processes of history.

            This was very clear to me yesterday when I went to an art and history exhibit about Italy’s wars for independence (their 150th year as a nation is this year). While I couldn’t understand all of the Italian in the descriptions, what I gathered was quite patriotic. The Italians fought for their land against the French and Prussians, with a common ethnicity, language, music, and colors binding them together. By blood and force the new nation had been forged.

But after World War II, it seemed that the concept of the nation-state had been dealt a deathblow. The radical fascism of Italy and Germany had proved disastrous, so most of the world united around universal values instead of the nation-state. The Western bloc chose the values of political freedom and sought to promote those, the Eastern bloc chose economic freedom from the claws of capitalism.

But meanwhile, hidden beneath the tide of universal values that rose up in the post-war period, one anomaly entered the system. The nation of Israel was founded, a homeland for the Jews scattered around the world. Finally, after 2000 years, the Jews would no longer be a minority in other lands! The verse I’ve heard applied by Israel’s founders comes from 1 Samuel 8:5, where the Jews want to be “like all other nations” (The fact that this displeased God is ignored). However, established in its founding charter as a “Jewish, democratic state”, Israel has sacrificed some democratic values to preserve its Jewish character, for example by forbidding non-Jews from immigrating and by banning non-Jews from getting married. Thus I believe that while Israel is obviously quite democratic compared to its Arab neighbors, it is not an American-style democracy. It is a Jewish nation-state with many democratic tendencies.

This has many interesting implications besides the marriage and immigration limitations mentioned above. A one-state solution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is no longer on the table because high Arab birthrates mean that there would be too many in the “Jewish” state. This also reveals itself in a well-documented bureaucratic effort to keep Palestinians from ‘taking over’ Jerusalem. Building permits for expansions of housing or schools are usually denied to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, while almost always approved for Jews. The result is over-crowding and poverty for these families in East Jerusalem, or else being forced into the even poorer cities Ramallah or Bethlehem.

 However, any Jew who questions any of Israel’s policies as unbefitting of a democratic state is labeled by many as a “self-hating Jew”. Why? Because by not supporting these policies of excluding non-Jews, they are undermining the concept of a solely Jewish state. Once that concept is gone, the theory goes, Jews will once again have nowhere to be safe and will inevitably face another Holocaust, one that will wipe them out for good. This is the basis I’ve heard over and over of all the fears of losing Israel’s solely Jewish character. So thus the ‘self-hating Jew’ is thought of in Zionist and neo-Zionist thought as an anti-Semite, therefore on the side of those who wish to complete Hitler’s Final Solution.

In fact, merely by writing this blog and other blogs that are mildly critical of one or two of Israel’s policies (such as the Security Barrier built on Palestinian land that economically crushes Palestinians), I have been personally called out for in essence being an anti-Zionist (AKA an anti-Semite). The fact that some people label would place me in the same camp as the Nazis is a bit scary and shows that no middle ground currently exists in the minds of modern-day Zionists. “Either you are with us or you are against us.” In their view, criticisms by leftist Jews or neutral people like me, intended to help Israel become an even better nation, must be completely silenced lest they serve as moral ammunition to the Hitlers who wait at the doorstep.

But perhaps, we see recently that Israel’s nationalist policies are not that deviant. Throughout the West there is now a trend towards preserving the “nation” from those “outsiders” who threaten it. In France and Germany, PMs Sarkozy and Merkel have each proclaimed that “multiculturalism has failed”. Throughout Europe, racism abounds against Muslim and African immigrants who threaten their singular national character. In France Muslim headscarves are banned, while racist parties gain power in Denmark and Switzerland. Goodbye freedom; hello nationalism.

To what extent is ultra-nationalism present in America? We see it in fears against Mexican immigrants and the need to preserve jobs for “true” Americans. That’s interesting because America is one of the few states in the world that was not founded on a singular nation of people. A mix of Europeans created a state built on the theory of freedom for all, regardless of race or religion. But perhaps America is in fact a nation like all other nations; the only difference being the rationale given for waging war. Instead of for a given “nation”, we wage war for “freedom”. Same violent results.

            Is there an answer? Must every group of humans necessarily become violently exclusionary to preserve it’s own identity? How does this apply to me as a Christian? If you’ve talked to me about these types of issues within the past year or so, I think you can guess what my solutions might entail. Hint: they do not involve a Church with political power. Instead, there must be a Church that is anti-political, on the side of the excluded, the lepers, the poor, the shunned. NOT to empower the outsiders politically, as that would ultimately lead to the same problem. But we are only called to love them, free them, and be among them.

(On a side note, I am frustrated by Christians who worry constantly about the direction America is heading politically. They’re afraid of the wrong things! The soul of a single person is infinitely more important than whether America continues to have Christian bling like Ten Commandment displays, “in God we trust” coins, or “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. I hate to say it, but America is not eternal. The soul of every single person is. So unless one thinks that angrily fighting gay marriage tooth and nail will somehow lead people to God, then one is fighting the wrong battles.)

Pardon me for the tangent. The conclusion to this long essay is that there is a way to avoid the temptations of nationalism. Nationalism is beautiful, and patriotism is surely a more beautiful idol to worship than drugs, alcohol, or sex. But for that reason it’s much more deadly. Thus we must renounce the nation state and choose to live in the world but not of it. To always challenge the systems of power that dominate and exclude. To unconditionally love the rejected.

I don’t believe in the myth of the Nation State anymore. And it saddens me to see that the Jews, God’s chosen people, have chosen to go the route of all other nations instead of deciding to be different, a light to the rest of the world. “It is not you they have rejected as their king, but me,” God says to Samuel (1 Sam. 8:7). The desire for a supposedly secure homeland trumps the desire to be uniquely God’s people, showing compassion to others.

May Christians not follow into the same error, and repent if they already have.

Why did the Republicans underperform so badly in the 2022 midterms?

From 2021 onward, I was telling people around me to expect a big Republican wave in the 2022 midterms elections. Even though Joe Biden had just won a sizable victory over Donald Trump in November 2020, and inflation had yet to emerge at that point, any political scientist or historian could tell you that the President’s party almost always loses seats in their first midterm election. (The only notable exception was in 2002, when George W. Bush coasted on the popularity he gained after 9/11 and Republicans picked up both houses of Congress). Even in February 2021, but especially after the messy retreat from Afghanistan and economic turmoil, it seemed inevitable that the Republicans would win the Senate and House–it was just a question of how big that would be. Many Republican pundits prophesied a “Red Tsunami,” a historic win demolishing the Democrats across the board.

Instead, what we saw in the 2022 midterms was barely a red trickle. Republicans failed to secure the Senate, and barely eked out a narrow majority in the House. Why was that? I have four reasons why I think that Republicans underperformed in the midterms. Most of these reasons are fairly well sourced and accepted by other political scientists, but I wanted to gather them in one place for posterity’s sake. Interestingly, many of these reasons will continue to apply in future elections in 2024 and 2026, no matter who the candidates are, so they’re worth paying attention to.

Before we dive in: Let me must first note that America is a deeply polarized nation and that the margins between the two parties are very tight. Even just changing a few thousand votes can make the difference between victory and defeat. So as I go through these four reasons for the Republicans’ lackluster performance, know that even if they only affected 1% or even .1% of the population, that can be enough to swing many close elections.

#1 – Trump — and his handpicked candidates– turned off many voters.

Even though Trump wasn’t on the ballot, many voters explicitly rallied against candidates that were seen as too “Trumpy”, extreme, or otherwise hateful. Moderate Republicans won big in many races, while more radical candidates were rejected. It became clear that some voters even engaged in “ticket-splitting”, where they voted straight Republican for more local races but voted against people they didn’t trust at the top of the ticket, like Dr. Oz in PA, Heschel Walker in GA, and others. While a majority of voters dislike Democrat policies and politicians, they fear extreme Republicans even more and are willing to vote accordingly. What should have been a referendum on Biden-who is very unpopular-became a referendum on Donald Trump, who is even more unpopular. [This is the main reason I believe that if Trump runs in 2024, he will probably lose, whereas any other Republican seen as less Trumpy would definitely win.]

#2- The Republican cries against mail-in ballots (and trust in elections overall) may be driving down their turnout in otherwise winnable races.

Mail-in ballots have been used for over a decade in places like Colorado, where they were seen as trustworthy, non-partisan, and secure. On the whole mail-in ballots SHOULD privilege Republicans, who tend to be older and have more stable mailing addresses. (I know many young Democrats who don’t know how to address an envelope and who move every 6 months, and I know many elderly home-bound Republicans who would strongly benefit from being able to vote by mail.) Unfortunately, because of the Republican turn against mail-in ballots, most Republicans refuse to use them. That’s a shame, because that means that when election day comes around, if an inconvenience comes up that makes voting difficult, a certain percentage of Republicans just won’t vote at all, whereas Democrats would have already locked in their votes weeks prior.

Or even setting aside mail-in voting; there are so many Republicans who now believe that elections are completely rigged and that their votes don’t matter even if they vote in person. These Republicans may decide to give up on elections altogether and either embrace apathy or alternative ways to engage with politics…for better or for worse. I think this dynamic is going to be a long-term drag on the Republican Party’s electoral prospects for at least a few election cycles.

#3- Shy Abortion Voters may be emerging from the woodwork (and pro-life voters may be about to lose some steam)

In 2016, many pundits wrote about “shy Trump voters”, AKA those who weren’t showing up in official polls but who nonetheless turned out to vote for him in his surprise win over Hillary Clinton. In 2022, we may be seeing the emergence of “shy abortion voters” who were reacting against the end of Roe v. Wade and the passage of very strong anti-abortion laws in some states. These voters may not have cared much about abortion before 2022 when it was generally legal with some restrictions, but when they saw that it might become totally illegal even in cases of rape and incest, they decided that was a step too far. Even in very conservative Kansas, voters overwhelmingly rejected an abortion ban. The more extreme the rhetoric that comes from Republicans, the more likely this will become a stronger driving force for Democrat turnout.

On the flip-side, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned some Republicans feel a bit dazed. What do we do now? Overturning a the national legal right to abortion was an easy, singular cause to rally people around. But now that that’s been accomplished and any gains must come at the state level, it will be harder to motivate the base in future elections, especially when the gains seem more controversial.

#4- COVID killed more Republicans than Democrats

This point may feel a bit hard to believe, but the data actually bears it out. While when COVID first hit it primarily affected liberal cities, but now it’s infected 90+% of Americans. As I stated earlier, on average Republican voters are older than Democrat voters, and thus more susceptible to death from COVID. Additionally, once the vaccine came out thanks to the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed”, on average Republicans rejected it at far higher rates than Democrats. (Even Democratic-leaning communities that have reason to be skeptical of government medical inventions, such as Native Americans, African-Americans, and other people of color, have generally received the vaccine at higher rates than Republicans.) It is well known that unvaccinated people die from COVID at far higher rates than vaccinated people.

The end result? Of the 1.1 MILLION Americans that have died of COVID, a disproportionate amount of them were Republicans. That’s an average of 22,000 people in each state. In close races where even 1,000 votes can swing an election, that’s going to have an impact. (For example, Lauren Boebert, Republican firebrand, won her election by less than 600 votes).

IN CONCLUSION, while many of the midterm elections in 2022 were clearly won at the local level based on local issues, there are a handful of reasons that the Republicans nationally underperformed. Unfortunately for Republicans, all four of these reasons look likely to continue to have an impact in 2024 and beyond. If Republicans manage to win elections, it will be based on them overcoming these hindrances and leveraging other strengths, such as their recent gains among Latinos. But in the meantime two key recommendations I might have for them would be to figure out a way to get their voters to trust in elections again, and to find a way to quietly ditch Donald Trump.

Some quick, unedited thoughts in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

A month ago, I wrote about possible responses that President Biden might take in response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. In no particular order, here are a few of the things I’ve been learning or thinking now that Russia has actually invaded.

–My original comparison of Ukraine to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 has been apt, and if anything, understated. While Jimmy Carter publicly levied sanctions and boycotts of Russia, he only sent RPGs and anti-air Stinger missiles to Afghanistan in secret, via back channels and neutral countries. In contrast, we have seen the US and many other countries publicly commit to directly sending anti-armor weapons and munitions to Ukraine. And a little bit similar to their experience in 1980s Afghanistan…

-…Russia has so far struggled in ways that they really should have prepared for. Despite having advanced intelligence, Russia failed to destroy Ukraine’s air force and anti-air capabilities. As such, they have struggled to establish air superiority over the skies, leaving their advance units vulnerable to counter-attack by sky or air. Already, I’ve seen reports of a Ukrainian pilot shooting down 6 Russian planes in a single day, something that hasn’t happened in Europe since WWII. Beyond the air, Russian supply lines have been overextended, leaving their troops lost, out of fuel, and vulnerable.

–Russia’s timeline for the start of the invasion was fairly obvious to those who were paying attention. While on NPR and other media outlets were questioning why the Biden administration kept saying invasion was imminent day after day, it’s clear that the intelligence was spot on. Moreover, experts had long said that Russia wanted to wait to invade Ukraine until mid-February or early March, when the ground would be most frozen and allow their tanks and support vehicles to traverse the ground without getting stuck in mud. No one should be surprised that 150,000 troops weren’t just there for “exercises”; that they were there to be an invasion force. The fact that some nations, such as Germany, were indeed surprised, shows a lack of understanding of how Putin works. In retrospect the Biden administration to continue to share publicly all the intelligence about Russian activities (in order to forestall a “false flag” operation, among other things) appear to be very prescient, and most likely denied the Russians a meaningful “casus belli” (cause for war).

–This was never just about the pro-Russian breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine; instead it’s about installing a pro-Moscow leader and solidifying holds over Ukrainian resources. Ever since the Kyiv revolution in 2014 overthrew the pro-Russian president, Putin has been looking for ways to re-install a sympathetic regime in Ukraine. In fact, the day before Russia actually invaded I was texting with a friend and stated this very thing, that it seems likely that Putin’s goal is to kill Zelensky (who is pro-EU and pro-Western) and install a ruler that Russia can control. That’s why we’ve seen so many Russian saboteur units attempt to sneak into Kyiv, and a strong focus on taking that city, and it makes Zelensky’s decision to stay and fight all the more bold. He must be careful to only surround himself with the most loyal of advisors; an assassin only has to be successful 1 out of a 100 times to topple his government. Additionally, taking most of eastern Ukraine will allow Russia to control the gas, oil, and water supplies that flow through the region: I did not know this until yesterday, but the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 is reliant upon the flow of water that comes from central Ukraine–and it has been cut off by Zelensky in retribution for that annexation. It’s essential that Putin control either the government or the land mass of Ukraine east of the Dnieper; and preferably both.

–Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine by withholding military aid in 2019 seems even more odious in hindsight. Most people have forgotten the circumstances that triggered the first Trump impeachment, but it involved Trump trying to manipulate Ukraine and Zelensky into launching false, public investigation of Joe Biden by choosing to withhold military aid. (Ukraine continued to be a talking point among the right-wing media for years, to the point that many still reflexively support Putin!) Given Trump’s stated desire to pull the United States out of NATO in his second term and withdraw military support from European nations facing the guns of Russia, it’s clear that Putin thought that he could get away with a quick invasion of a country that apparently did not have the full support of the United States.

-Putin has energized Western European nations to unify and mobilize militarily in ways not seen in decades. Despite Trump’s best attempts to force Germany to increase their defense spending (like Obama before him), that country had long refused to raise military spending to the minimum goal of 2% of GDP, nor send military aid to Ukraine. Both of those things have changed in the past 7 days, with the chancellor pledging a massive increase in military spending and shipping anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Germany is not alone; many other nations in NATO and the EU have pledged unprecedented military responses to Russia. As Thucydides predicted 2500 years ago, when a powerful state begins to assert itself, even if its purpose is to increase its own security, it inevitably cause surrounding nations to rally to counter this rising threat. If Putin’s stated desire was to prevent NATO and EU from mobilizing against Russian interests, he has caused the exact opposite to happen.

–Just like the Biblical story in Judges 12 about the word “shibboleth”, Russian invaders have been vulnerable to small cultural differences including the pronunciation of certain words. While there are major linguistic similarities between the two countries, Ukrainians have been able to identify and halt Russians by asking them to pronounce “palyanitsa“, the word for a type of bread. If the Russians can’t pronounce it, they are identified as outsiders and attacked. Relatedly, Ukrainians have torn down roadsigns (or replaced them with obscene phrases) to hinder the ability of Russians to find their way around the country.

–Though they share many similarities, the religious differences between Ukrainians and Russians are important to recognize. This has not been widely discussed in the mainstream media, but Putin’s connections to the Russian Orthodox Church may be a substantial motivator for him and others seeking to conquer Ukraine. Kyiv is the historic site for the founding of the Russian Orthodox Church, but the Ukraine Orthodox community has been seeking to distance themselves from Russia and the Patriarch Kirill (who is a major ally of Putin’s). Additionally, while in Russia evangelical Christians have faced persecution and hostility, videos have emerged of evangelicals in Ukraine worshipping in bomb shelters while shells rain down from the sky.

-Speaking of shells, a surprising amount of Russian armaments have failed. I have seen over a dozen pictures and videos of unexploded Russian ordinance (rockets and shells). While that always happens a certain number of times in war, the frequency seems to indicate subpar weapons and maintenance among the Russians. Their army and air force have vastly underperformed expectations, even granted Ukrainian tenacity.

-Ukraine may be an interesting test case for the American gun debate. Many Americans have long held that citizens need to be able to own automatic assault rifles to defend against a tyrannical governmental military force. Ukraine will be an interesting test case, given how many citizens there own AK-47s and other military-style weapons. Will that be enough to repel a Russian invasion? Or is it more the case that the decider will be the presence of anti-tank weapons, and RPGs? And if it’s the second one, can we finally stop pretending that a handful of citizens armed solely with rifles can meaningfully defeat a modern-day nation state? Or will gun activists in the US decide to start advocating for the right to own RPGs?

Anyway, there’s probably a lot more I could say, but I wanted to share a few quick responses to all that’s going on. As always, these are my personal thoughts, subject to change as new information arises.