From the Editor: Hey, What’s Going On?

Ukraine.

It’s on the minds of so many, watching in horror as each new development unfolds.

I can’t look away. I’m invested. I care what happens to these people who were just minding their own business and are now on the receiving end of some really bad stuff. I’m terrified that something could happen to the country’s president, who has become a global hero and an example of what it means to be a leader.

Or that something even worse might happen.

I somberly cheer each time a new sanction or support action is announced. Whether it’s the banking system, the energy companies, FIFA or the International Judo Federation rising up in solidarity and saying no. Or Elon Musk coming to the rescue with internet or Google disabling their maps so the people of Ukraine aren’t sitting ducks.

I share every detail and to the outsider it’s probably almost obsessive.

But the truth is, I don’t want what’s happening to stop being the lead story. I want the world to keep talking about it until it’s finally put to a halt. I want the global response to be resounding, definitive and unified.

This is not ok and we’re not going to let it happen. 

We’ve been watching little chunks taken from that region over the past decade and every time we’ve found a reason to excuse it. The story is so hauntingly familiar it’s painful. Some of the people alive today are old enough to know this story without having to consult a history book.

So yes, I will continue to share the updates, maddeningly so, and if you don’t like it, look away.

I don’t want my kids to have to raise their children on a planet destroyed by war and poisoned by WMDs because in the earliest stages of the conflict when we could have stopped it, we did nothing.

I don’t want to see generations born with birth defects because of scorched earth or an entire population of people eradicated because they refused to submit.

I don’t want to be that person who looked away because it was someone else’s responsibility to do something, say something. 

Watching a 40 mile Russian convoy approach bringing death tonight, my mind can’t seem to wrap around why, in this day and age this is happening. With all the councils comprised of every acronym under the sun, why can’t or won’t we say – you shall not pass and make it so.