Ukraine, and Trump's immorality/amorality

Here is a piece by Anne Appelbaum, the noted writer, author, and foreign policy analyst, in the October 12th Atlantic, online.

The piece is titled "Trump's Message to Ukraine Is Now Crystal Clear"; its subtitle is, "The president's actions over the past 72 hours look like an effort to force Kyiv to surrender."

Trump--appearing now, overtly, to be all in with Vladimir Putin, while throwing President Zelenskyy, and the country he has tried to save, to the wolves.  

The immorality--and the amorality--of Trump's conduct regarding Russia's war against Ukraine, are staggering, tragic.

America's Golden Age, as Trump likes to proclaim?  It feels, too often, more like an age of nightmares.

Ms. Appelbaum's October 12th piece includes the following:

In the past 72 hours, Donald Trump has dropped all pretense, torched a couple decades of American policy, and undermined 18 months of his own diplomacy. He lifted sanctions on the import of Russian diesel fuel, in violation of the letter and spirit of laws that he himself signed. He has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine, unless Ukraine agrees not to target Russian refineries, thus demanding that Kyiv give up its most effective weapon while asking nothing from Russia in exchange. He has not criticized Russian attacks on Ukrainian power plants or factories, even those owned by American companies. He has offered no condolences for the recent deaths of Ukrainian children in Russian bombing raids.

He has lied repeatedly. He declared that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an “energy cease-fire,” an announcement that surprised the Ukrainians and that in any case the Russians immediately broke, hitting a power plant in Kharkiv only hours later. He accused Ukraine of blocking negotiations, when in reality the Ukrainians have repeatedly proposed cease-fires and Russia has never agreed to a cease-fire or any meaningful negotiation at all.

He has described Ukraine’s democratically elected president as an obstacle to negotiations and told him to leave office. But on Friday, before making these new decisions, he held yet another long, friendly telephone conversation with the Russian dictator, who really could end the war today. All Vladimir Putin has to do is tell his soldiers to stop fighting, and then the war is over. The Ukrainians cannot stop fighting because, if they do, their country will be conquered and they will suffer the fate of their occupied territories: leaders murdered, children kidnapped, repression and concentration camps for everyone else. If Trump knows this, then he does not care.

Here is the link to the full October 12th piece by Ms. Appelbaum:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/trump-ukraine-putin-fuel/688974/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm92bYGGHtIbjwfqAuyrwR48&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Livestreaming an execution

Defense Secretary Hegseth--announcing yesterday that Nidal Hasan, the radicalized Army psychiatrist who murdered thirteen soldiers at Texas's Fort Hood in 2009, and injured thirty-two others, would not only be executed in December by a firing squad, but that the execution would be livestreamed.

Trump, today, said he approved of the livestreaming.

Livestreaming an execution.  This is grotesque, and depraved.

From a New York Times story, today:

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said [yesterday] in an interview with a conservative news outlet.

The Times reporter wrote:

No public execution has been conducted in the United States in 90 years, and the decision to conduct this one in front of an audience would put the country in the company of Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Somalia. Just 17 executions around the world were confirmed to be conducted publicly last year, according to Amnesty International: six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran. Even Saudi Arabia, once known for hanging prisoners in public, has not conducted a public execution since 2022.

Even some supporters of capital punishment flinched at the idea of livestreaming Mr. Hasan’s execution, calling it medieval and barbaric. “Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” said Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Trump has been unable to win his gut-driven, impulsive, erratic war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a war he said in March would last four to six weeks.  I am guessing--at least in part because of his inability, thus far, to bring the war to a successful conclusion--that both he and Hegseth are finding a perverse kind of pleasure in this planned livestreaming. The idea of the livestream--letting people across the world watch as the United States executes a mass murderer, a radicalized Muslim man--is hideous on its own terms.  Yet it feels, indeed, as though the announced December livestream is very possibly being used as a proxy for the administration's failures abroad.

(Please note: a few changes were made to the above in the hours after it was posted.)

2023

Three years ago, on this date, Hamas (joined by members of other terrorist groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad) invaded Israel, murdering some 1200 people (more than 800 of them civilians), and kidnapping 251 others, taking them to Gaza, as hostages.

Eva Marie Saint (1924-2026)

Eva Marie Saint, who died on Tuesday at age 102, was a tremendous actress.  

She was awarded an Oscar, for the absorbing and skilled performance she gave in her feature film debut--as Edie Doyle, opposite Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, in Elia Kazan's riveting On the Waterfront (1954). 

She co-starred with Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959).  I can't count the number of times I have watched the film; with every viewing I have admired, enormously, all that she brought to the role of Eve Kendall, in what is certainly one of Hitchcock's finest movies.

Ms. Saint appeared in a long list of films and television programs through the decades.  Before her film stardom, in On the Waterfront, she had appeared regularly in live television productions--including the series One Man's Family (1950-1952), the anthology drama series Studio One (a few telecasts, between 1949 and 1953), and the 1953 telecast of The Trip to Bountiful, written by Horton Foote. The Trip to Bountiful was brought to Broadway later that year, and Ms. Saint, as with the television program, had a starring role in the play.

Her films included Raintree County (1957), A Hatful of Rain (also in 1957), Exodus (1960), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), and Winter's Tale (2014).

In late 1996 or early 1997, Ms. Saint and her husband, noted television director Jeffrey Hayden, appeared in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a public showing of a television documentary--Children in America's Schools--that their production company, the Saint/Hayden Company, released in 1996. Mr. Hayden directed and wrote the program, in addition to producing it with Ms. Saint. The host of the documentary was Bill Moyers.

Ms. Saint and Mr. Hayden, who married in 1951, discussed the documentary, and their careers, on a radio talk show I hosted at the time in Charlottesville. They were gracious, kind, engaging, and uncommonly interesting--and I've always regarded the hour or so during which we spoke as being one of the most enjoyable times I've ever spent on the radio.

Here are the IMDb.com pages for Ms. Saint, and Mr. Hayden, who died in 2016 at age 90.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001693/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370749/?ref_=nmbio_sp_1

Here, too, is the New York Times obituary of Ms. Saint:  

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/movies/eva-marie-saint-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G1E.x9wz.9c7rpFMWJD3Q&smid=url-share

Trump, Kaitlan Collins, and the press at-large

When the President announced on Friday, in the Oval Office, that he was implementing a White House ban on the news organizations CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, he said the following, which was widely reported--and which was included in a story today in The Atlantic:

“There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” he said when he banned CNN and the other two outlets. “Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my—into the people’s house.”

...into my--into the people's house.

An interesting, and telling, linguistic slip. 

Today's Atlantic piece, by staff writer Olga Khazan, is titled "A Revealing Exchange Between Donald Trump and Kaitlan Collins." It is subtitled "The president doesn’t understand how journalism works."

The piece begins by describing Trump's brief back and forth, at the United Nations on Tuesday, with Ms. Collins, the excellent CNN chief White House correspondent, and anchor of the network's weeknight program The Source.

Here is the link to the Atlantic story:

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/09/trump-kaitlan-collins-united-nations/688757/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzbpQZyn35KQbb5gpFppjbk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

A brief meditation, as Yom Kippur begins at sundown, tonight

It is one of a number of meditations in the Yom Kippur portion of the Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur prayer book Gates of Repentance. The prayer book was edited by Chaim Stern, and published in 1978 by the  Central Conference of American Rabbis, the leading Reform Jewish rabbinical organization.

From the 11th Century rabbi and philosopher Bachya ibn Pakuda:

Days are scrolls: write on them only what you want remembered.

The New Year

My best wishes for Rosh Hashanah, to all who are celebrating/observing the holiday...