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The James Bond Project #19: GoldenEye (1995)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 7 Comments

April 15, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

GoldenEye (1995, directed by Martin Campbell)

The first Bond film in the fourth decade of the 007 franchise is something of a synthesis of all the previous EON Production films and a fair send-off for EON producer Cubby Broccoli, who died five months after its release. After a long six year gap, while Eon dragged Timothy Dalton into development hell, Bond was back with Pierce Brosnan as the new British MI-6 commander. GoldenEye fused License to Kill’s vengeful 007 with the smarmy, Casanova Bond of the past. The first Bond film not to be based on an Ian Fleming story is a sweeping tale that presents Bond with his first post-Cold War conflict and was tailor-made for 90s audiences who were getting used to the widescreen violence in films like Natural Born Killers.

Brosnan, who had been offered the role before Dalton, comes in a more upper crust English, but also more boyish, Bond who has parachuted into a third-wave feminist world. This disconnect is magnified by the new M, now played by Dame Judi Dench. The new M states a clear opinion on the archetype that is Bond, James Bond. “I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms are wasted on me,” she tells him. Welcome to the 90s, James. We still have Desmond Llewelyn as Q to link us to the Bond cannon. This installment’s Bond “girl” is Swedish model and actress Izabella Scorupco, who forces a rough Russian accent. Also trying to be Russian (or Georgian) is “sadistic lust murderer” Xenia Onatopp (There’s the names we love in these films), played by Famke Janssen (soon to be Jean Grey in the X-Men films).

GoldenEye starts with a flashback to the Cold War days with 007 and 006 on a mission in the Soviet Union where 006 (played by the great Sean Bean) is killed. Bond blames himself, setting up the revenge redux. After an epic scene where James dives into a falling plane (This is the first Bond film to use CGI), we flash forward to the present where new Russia is losing track of its shit and we’re off. The scene where James is chasing the rogue Russian general through the streets in St. Petersburg in a giant Russian tank was classic 007 thrills on the big screen. I remember watching it in the Lloyd Center Cinema and thinking it was the wildest thing filmmakers could cock up for a James Bond movie.

This installment gives us plenty of Bond staples fans crave. There’s Bond in a tux, playing baccarat, there’s Bond in the Caribbean, there’s the double entendre quips (none very clever), and thousands of bullets fired at our James with nary a scratch. The film also features some epic stunts, including a record setting bungee jump off a Russian (actually Swiss) dam that has to be seen to believed. Brosnan plays Bond closer to Moore than Connery and his bourgeois demeanor adds to the “Man out of place” element that makes this film kinda fun. Cubby Broccoli’s daughter, Barbara, took over the production as her father’s health failed, so some of the gender commentary may have been here doing.

Let’s see how GoldenEye fares in our feminist matrix.

Driver of Action – New Bond, new star. Q and his lab techs show up for comedic effect. There’s a new CIA agent, Jack Wade, to help out (Joe Don Baker is back!) because Felix is still legless from the shark. The new post-communist Russia really plays the support role. In the gap between Yeltsin and Putin, it presented a blank slate to the world, where the need for secret agents might be a thing of the past. But this film rests purely on the shoulders of Remington Steele star Pierce Brosnan.

Role of Violence – There’s a lot of slaughter in GoldenEye, largely due to Bond’s use of machine guns. I had to ask ChatGBT the body count because I lost track. AI reports James killed 47 people in the film, mostly Russian soldiers. (Wasn’t the Cold War over?) There’s also some weird violent sexual scenes with Xenia Onatopp (we’re to believe that violence is her kink) and a scene where 007 knocks her unconscious.

Vulnerability – For the first time in a Bond film, we learn that James’ parents were killed in a mountain climbing accident when he was a boy. But there’s no sense that this plays a role in his present psyche. It’s just presented as a factoid to contrast the story that 006’s parents were killed by Stalin.  There’s no James in love and only a mild sense of guilt that 006’s death might be his fault.

Sexual Potency – Here’s the James Bond rule of three. 1) Caroline – An MI-6 psychologist, sent to evaluate James, gets seduced by our agent who has a bottle of bubbly in the glovebox. He’s going to let her give him, “a very thorough evaluation.” Wink. 2) Xenia Onatopp – It’s more fighting than sex. James is taken aback by her biting his lip and drawing blood. Her death (pulled into a tree by a helicopter) is also played as sexual but in 2025 seems just weird. 3) Natalya Simonova (played by Izabella Scorupco), a Russian computer programmer, is Bond’s “love” interest/damsel in distress in the film. He forcibly kisses her and then suddenly they’re a romantic couple. (This quasi-rape trope seems all too common in 007 flicks.)

It should be mentioned that Bond’s relationship with Moneypenny (now played by Samantha Bond) is firmly located in 90s feminist positions. She’s not having any of James’ “charm” offensive. Bond: “What would I do without you?” Moneypenny : “As far as I can remember James, you’ve never had me.” Bond: “Hope springs eternal.” Moneypenny: “This sort of behavior could qualify as sexual harassment.” Finally.

Connection – Brosnan plays Bond detached, as we have come to expect. There’s a hint of a back story between 006 and 007 that might have been nice to know about. As is expected, he and Natalya end the film together, not in a boat but in a Cuban meadow. They think they’re alone, but there is some coitus interruptus from the United States Marines, so they’ll have to save their victory sex for another day, or never. There’s no real chemistry between these two so the door is open for Bond’s next “girl.”

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 5

Summary The opening title sequence of GoldenEye, with women smashing hammers and sickles to a song written by U2 (and sung by Tina Turner) locates the film in a new era. The Cold War was the golden era of the Flemming novels and the platform for Bond’s good vs. evil adventures. Now New Bond is forced (again?) to find his relevance. Is he a 90s-action hero, right up there with Arnold Schwarzenegger, or a washed-up antique who has lost his cultural relevance? His elevated violence and philandering may be intended as a middle finger to the politically correct shifts in cinema.

The tech in GoldenEye is a co-star along with lots of product placement. (Welcome to the new global market place.) IBM is featured front and center (and a great scene where a young Alan Cumming gets an “email”). The Aston Martin is replaced with a BMW, fully loaded with Q’s gadgets. “You have a license to kill, not to break the traffic laws,” Q tells an impish Bond. GoldenEye also gives us that most central staple of Bond Baddie accessories, the underground lair, hidden below a lake, from where a deadly satellite is controlled. Its explosive destruction is everything that Bond fans buy movie tickets to see.

GoldenEye premiered on November 13, 1995 at Radio City Music Hall, as the war in Yugoslavia, the largest hot war resulting from the end of the Cold War, was reaching its peak. The direction of Martin Campbell and the production of Barbara Broccoli (with Judi Dench’s M) represented a chance to reboot the franchise in a world without the Soviet Union. What issues would MI-6 confront as the 20th century closed? With the help of CGI, the promise of epic stunts and a horny agents would be a part of it.

Next: Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

The James Bond Project #18: License to Kill (1989)

The James Bond Project #17: The Living Daylights (1987)

The James Bond Project #16: A View to a Kill (1985)

The James Bond Project #15: Never Say Never Again (1983)

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy (1983)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

Watching the Death of Nation in Real Time

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

April 1, 2025

A hundred bucks says Donald Trump has never read the U.S. Constitution. Or The Bible. Or a book. His latest blather about running for a third term is either an overt telegraphing that he’s going to pull a Putin and declare himself “President for Life” or it’s another distraction from that fact that he and Musk are crashing the system so they can scoop up the pieces.

Either way, America is screwed.

I’ve written ad nauseam about the elements of the Trump movement that map directly on to the rise of fascism, starting back in 2015. The parallels this time around are even more stark, including hollowing out America’s system of checks and balances (starting with firing inspector generals), alienating our long term allies (Blame Canada?), flaunting the rule of law, especially due process, and the vision of expanding empire. Leave Greenland alone.

In 70 insane days, Trump has transformed the United States from a democracy to an anocracy. Anocracies are hybrids of democracy and authoritarianism. Russia has elections, but they are Putin-controlled cosplay. Trump is playing by Putin’s playbook, step by step, where a democracy is transformed into a dictatorship, with the support of the loyal oligarchs. And when your favorite oligarch is the richest man on the planet it’s that much easier.

The damage Elon Musk is doing to America may be irreparable. The 2400 Americans that Musk fired from the CDC today will have ripple effects across the world, but especially in communities that voted for Trump who require federal support in disease prevention. But, hey, MAGA got to own those liberal scientists! America is unravelling. Our safety net is being shredded. Social security is next. Our national security is already splayed open on the Signal app. The nation collapsing. And it’s not in slow motion.

Trump, his drunk frat boy sycophants, and the crafty billionaires that cleverly steer the President of the United States have a plan, to remake America into Russia, a feudal state where the landed gentry collect the wealth and the rest of us pay the interest on our debt to them. Trump going after DEI, civil rights protections, and vote by mail is all part of the race to autocracy. All that was great about 20th Century America is being erased before our eyes.

But in a moment straight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we’re not dead yet. We still have time to jump off the corpse wagon.

The natives are restless. Protests are growing all over the country, including in red states. Americans are waking up to the threat. Sociologist C. Wright Mills called it the sociological imagination. When you are aware of your values and those values are under threat, the crisis moves you to develop a wider analysis. If you value American democracy, this is a fucking crisis. And the irony is that it will be disaffected Republicans who tip this thing into a national surge against Trumpism. Yeah, Idiocracy requires idiots and there will always be MAGA cultists who will follow their orange god off a cliff, but we can do this without them. We need Reagan Republicans and the ghost of John McCain. (Eighties Me can’t believed I just typed that, but this is an emergency!)

This is go time, America. It’s time for old baby boomers and young Gen Alphas to make noise, monkey wrench, flood the courts, take to the streets, sit in, stand up, and stop this madness. Or there will be a point when we can no longer claim to be free.

America is No Longer the Leader of the Free World

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

March 4, 2025

Many of us watched the February 28th White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is abject horror. One of our most heralded allies was being attacked by Trump and Vance like a child being berated for breaking a window with a baseball. Then it became clear that it was the set up. An ambush for Trump’s Russian bosses. Vance badgering him to apologize. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend chiding him about not wearing a suit (when few of Trump’s White House chums have). I wanted Zelenskyy to just say to Trump, “Mr. President, are you aligned with America’s ally, Ukraine, or Putin?”

We know what Trump would have said – “I’m not aligned with anybody.” 

In that moment, it was clear that America was no longer the leader of the free world. That our allies could no longer rely on us and that we weren’t going to lift a finger to defend democracy. In that moment, Trump gave Putin the green light to obliterate Ukraine. At the United Nations, we voted with Russia (and North Korea) against the condemnation of Russia’s 2022 invasion. The following actions backed that position up, including halting support of military aid to Ukraine, ceasing cyber operations against Russia, mass firings at the CIA and FBI, and Trump asking to end U.S. sanctions against Russia. What more could Vladimir Putin ask for? (I’m sure we’ll find out.)

Trump’s capitulation to Russia and the falling in line of the MAGA cult rings familiar. In the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were Americans, including in Congress, that thought the United States sending billions of dollars to our European allies to fight Nazi Germany was a big ol’ waste. Those nations weren’t sufficiently “grateful.” This included after Germany began their brutal blitzkrieg of Great Britain in 1940. They wanted England to at least give us some of their islands in the Caribbean for helping them. But FDR said, F that. We’re all in for freedom.

What launched the American century began in the first global conflict. During the “war to end all wars” (aka WW I), isolationist voices had the day, until it was clear that Britain and France REALLY need our help (and a ton of American merchant ships were being sunk by U-boats). On April 6, 1917, we declared war on Germany and shut that shit down. By November of the following year, the war was over. And the United States was the new hot shot defender of freedom, our perfect hair blowing in the wind. Ever since that moment in 1918, lovers of freedom and democracy knew we were their ride or die. Sure there were some ethical lapses, Central America, Vietnam, but for the most part we were the good guys on the planet.

That ended last Friday. The global realignment, long envisioned my MAGA architects, has jettisoned its long held alliance with Europe, viewed as decadent by Steve Bannon and white nationalists, in favor of an allegiance to authoritarian regimes like Russia. France is “socialist” and Moscow has clean subways. Sure, political dissidents are thrown into Siberian prisons, but Moscow has clean subways. We are now a part of the axis of evil and Trump and his handlers could not be happier.

I often tell the story of the time I was at a meeting at the U.S. embassy in London in 2018. I was there as a part of a government-funded trip to study how the British respond to violent extremism. We just happened to be at the embassy the day President Trump was attending a summit in Helsinki, Finland with the Russian leader. We all watched the press conference where Trump famously said that he trusted Putin’s assertion that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, over the evidence presented by his own intelligence agencies. The shock among the career diplomats I was watching with was palpable. They immediately scrambled to craft a response to the fact that the U.S. President and had just publicly chosen loyalty to the biggest dictator on the planet over his own nation.

We don’t know if Putin has some serious kompromat on Trump (perhaps the pee pee tapes are in a vault in the Kremlin) or Trump just really wants to be an authoritarian (or both), but Trump’s mandate is clear. He’s out for himself. He’s never read the Constitution, or The Bible for that matter. I’d lay odds he’s never read a complete book. He’s the transactional president. If it serves him and the sycophants that kiss his ass, he will throw Americans and their security under the bus. He will wage war on our allies, like Canada and Mexico, and sing the praises of dictators like Turkey’s Erdoğan and Hungary’s Orbán. Whatever fluffs his fragile ego.

Trump is murdering America.

So, sorry Ukraine, and other nations fighting to be free and democratic, we now have our own fight to win.

Where I’ve Been, What I’ve Seen, Who I Am: A Brief Reflection of My Time in Ukraine/Poland

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

April 5, 2022

After my epic journey from Poland to Portland, that included another two missed flights and a night spent in the Newark Airport, I had the brief honeymoon of home. As if written in a screenplay, my Lyft driver at the Portland airport was a Ukrainian named Ruvim. He dropped me off in front of my house and Cozy ran out to great me. After over two weeks away, I fell to my knees and hugged her, thinking of all the dads in Ukraine who long to hold their kids but can’t because they are saving their nation from sociopathic Russians who are raping Ukrainian women in front of their children.

Coming home to Cozy and Andi felt like a dream. They are my sanctuary, my reason for everything. As is tradition, I gave Cozy her snow globes (from Paris and Krakow). I gave Andi a neckless and cross that had belonged to a Ukrainian mother who we got to safety. It felt like I was finally home. But it wasn’t really home. Andi had boxed up her things while I was away and was already entrenched in another relationship, and my silly plan to return home like a badass Rambo and sweep her off her feet with stories of glory was lost in my lack of sleep and the ghosts of what I had seen while I was away, not to mention that I was now only her husband on paper. I just wanted to take hot shower and fall asleep cuddling with my daughter, which I did.

The next morning, I jumped back into the routine and got Cozy to school. I hopped in the car after dropping her off and switched on NPR and that was that. The news was the horror stories coming out of Bucha, where Russian soldiers had tortured and murdered Ukrainian civilians in ways that make ISIS look like kindergartners. My heart raced and my first and only thought was, “ WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING IN PORTLAND? I SHOULD STILL BE THERE GETTING PEOPLE OUT!” The intense guilt of leaving. I knew these kids that they were killing. I knew their mothers. I knew the men who were living lives like me in one moment and thrown into an unexpected and unwanted war the next. How dare I be on my way to grab a latte when Russians are cutting their tongues out?

I don’t know if this is trauma but I do recognize my brain has changed. I have to imagine this is exactly what veterans experience when they return home from combat, the intense compulsion to rejoin the fight. And it’s not like I did 12 months in Afghanistan. I did two weeks in Poland and Ukraine and already I’m all Deer Hunter, ready to go right back. There’s also the adrenaline rush that a former cop recently told me is the attraction for many in law enforcement. If my cognitive patterns were changed in a fortnight, imagine how it must be for career military. 

The guilt is intense. While I was there, it seemed like things might be winding down and the Russians would go home with their tails between their legs, having underestimated the strength and courage of the Ukrainian people. Au contraire, mon frère. The Russians just leveled up their savagery. I should have stayed. I should have driven vans full of ammo straight to our contacts in Irpin so they could have taken these monsters’ heads off. I proved that I can do this work, racing around sandbags and hedgehogs in western Ukraine. I mean how old was Pablo in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls? 

It’s a race of emotions that is balanced out by the very real fact that I have a beautiful daughter who needs her father here. I know she was proud of the fact that I was helping kids like her on the other side of the planet. She needs to know that she’s my priority. But the reality is, she’s not worried about Russian rockets slamming into her school and the children of Lviv are.

I’m just writing this, processing this, in this, getting it out for my own sake. You’re welcome to continue reading. I’ve had several espressos today, doubled my Zoloft, and am blasting Napalm Death’s “Suffer the Children” on my stereo. Not sure what the real world has to offer, especially after my day at Auschwitz on Friday. Is the world being destroyed or recreated? Will something wonderful emerge from the ashes, or will the illogic of the Putin-Trump cults lead us into a dystopian nightmare?

I’ll be OK. I have a great therapist, a good job, friends, an amazing kid, and a roof over my head. I can find ways to help Ukrainians from Portland and I can loose myself in music and books (although I might have to finish For Whom the Bell Tolls later). One thing I did do is ditch being called “Randy.” I’ve grown up. Call me Randall. I’m not the person I was. It’s time to be better at being better.

These two weeks did a number on me. My heart is in Ukraine. My heart is with all the veterans experiencing PTSD. My heart is with every refugee who wishes they were home. My heart is with my daughter who deserves a better world than the one we currently have. I’ve learned not to expect empathy, but I have a feeling there are countless people who understand what this feels like.

One Night in Lviv (Makes a Hard Man Humble)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

March 28, 2022

Yesterday (Sunday, March 27) started out like a fairly normal day here in southeastern Poland and ended in a bomb shelter in Lviv, Ukraine. I started the day, like I had the previous two, working on the safe house in Jaroslaw, Poland. I was planning on a day of manual labor, dressed in camo pants and a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt, digging a garden with some new volunteers from North Carolina. An older Ukrainian woman had told us to dig where the mole hills were because that ground was softer. Then Sally, our fearless leader, came out said, “Randy, if you want to go to Lviv, now is your chance.”

That day’s trip to Lviv, Ukraine had been postponed because the Russians bombed it the day before. But here things change on a dime and the window was open. Sally’s 19-year-old driver, Vitali, hadn’t made the trip yet and she wanted me along as assurance the supplies got to their destination in western Ukraine, most to be sent on to Kyiv. As I’ve written, I have an unhealthy attraction to chaos so without anything other than my work gloves and a light bomber jacket, I hopped in the van with Vitali and we made a b-line for the war zone.

Crossing the border into Ukraine is a bit of a logistical nightmare, with endless roadblocks. More powerful there is the stream of Ukrainian civilians, fleeing on foot, and walked into the EU by Polish soldiers, into a waiting array of social networks to begin their lives as refugees. Once through the final check, Vitali hit the gas and we sped eastward, the smoke from the oil depot the Russians had just bombed rising in the distance. A faster target was harder to hit, he reminded me, Russian hip hop blasting at full volume. Sandbags, anti-tank hedgehogs, Ukrainian national and red and black Ukrainian Insurgent Army flags, and billboards that read, “Слава Україні!” (Glory to Ukraine!) lined the route to Lviv. We were in.

We GPS’ed our asses to the heart of the city, where we were meeting contacts (where, I won’t say). All the supplies we had ferried into the city were quickly distributed, some into waiting cars, some stored to be carried eastward. The suitcase I had bought at a Portland Target, and all the medical supplies inside it, were marked for Kyiv, currently under siege. The plan was to unload everything and get back on the road for Poland before the 10 pm curfew, but the border crossing took longer than planned and, as the sun dipped down, we were stuck. And it was getting Russian winter cold. I was not dressed appropriately.

Our Ukrainian contacts, all in their twenties, invited us to stay in their shelter and have dinner. I was thrilled at the opportunity to break bread with these local heroes who were housing refugees from all over their country. I ate pasta, sausages, and tea cakes from a wedding that had just occurred upstairs. I talked religion, Polish film, and Kevlar vests with sanctuary seekers from Horenka, Irpin, and Donetsk. It was a beehive of energy, mothers with children, men who were prepared to be mobilized into the fight, and plenty coffee, tea, and bonhomie.

As it got late, it was time to turn in. The women (and their children) had one sleeping room and the men (and at least one kid) had another. Vitali, who had been sick, was already sound asleep when I dropped on to my pallet on the floor. The air raid sirens and then the sound of Russian jets had me thinking I might be closer to the chaos than I needed to be, but the strong coffee and a prolific snorer put my mind on other issues, like when would sleep rescue me from this bizarre scene.

This morning, after maybe an hour of dreamtime, I went for a walk around Lviv while Vitali waited for some important documents that had to be delivered by Poland. I was struck by how normal life appeared in a time of war. Workers painted guardrails and mothers pushed baby carriages like it was any other Monday morning. I grabbed a cappuccino from a kava stand and a phone charger at a computer shop. Lviv is a massive city so the odds of a Russian missile hitting the block you were standing on were slim. Not zero, but slim.

Back at the shelter we got word from Sally that there was a Lviv family that had found placement in a home west of Krakow and we were to extract them from the city. Saying goodbye to our hosts, we hopped in the van and found a mother and her three daughters more than ready to get out of the city that had, until that weekend, been safe from attack. Vitali, in Top Gun mode, and me as, sadly, the goofy dad, loaded them in, with the air raid sirens again wailing, and hit the road west out of Lviv. It felt like escaping death, like an Underground Railroad out of hell. On the way, the mother explained the red and black Ukrainian Insurgent Army flags. “It means blood and death,” she said in Ukrainian, “and the Russians hate it. That’s why we fly it.”

We brought the family to Zreszow where another driver waited carry them the rest of the way. They seemed a bit shell-shocked to be so quickly displaced into a new country. I wondered if the three girls would remember their flight out of Lviv (and the cookies we shared) in their later years, or if it would all just be one traumatic blur. It felt good to be back on the safe side of the line but I had to acknowledge the electric thrill of getting that close to the action. I started to see why war veterans dream of returning to the fight.

While this work is “satisfying,” it’s greatly guilt inducing. Guilt in never being able to do enough. Guilt from concern about playing the “white savior” role and “rescuing damsels in distress.” And guilt from getting off on the adrenaline rush of heading into danger. Am I here for the right reasons? I also feel guilty that I probably won’t be here long enough to figure it out. But I know this work is making a tangible difference. And I don’t feel guilty about that.

In the Toilet Paper Tube of History: Watching the Battle for Ukraine in Real Time

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

February 27, 2022

We’re all gerbils crawling through an endless toilet paper tube. Most of the time we don’t notice the tube, because we’re focused on our forward motion. But every once in a while, we realize that we’re stuck in a freaking cardboard tube and it’s controlling everything about what we can see and where we can go.

History is that toilet paper tube. I remember how on a Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I realized the events I was watching on my father’s television in Roswell, Georgia would impact every aspect of my world.  There were two realities, pre-9/11 and post-9/11. The tube was tight, preventing me from getting on a flight back to Portland. And it’s touched our reality ever since.

I feel that way again, watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I was focused on the tasks at hand, getting my students through winter quarter, adjusting to life as a single parent, waiting for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to start a new season. And then on Wednesday night all that changed as Putin sent tanks and troops across the border in an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation. I had a similar feeling when I was 15-years-old on New Year’s Eve 1979, watching Soviet tanks roll into Afghanistan. It felt like the whole world shifted on its axis a bit.

Now as Russian troops bomb Kyiv, it seems like the axis shift is massive. Thursday I took time to talk to my University of Oregon students and ask them to be present in this moment. They will likely talk to their grandchildren 50 years from now about the first days of the third world war. Rising gas prices, bread shortages, fear of conscription are surely weighing on their minds. But for these Generation Z students, most born after 9/11, this will all get very real when the Russian cyber hacks shut Instagram down.

Historical parallels aside (Hitler pulled the same stunt in 1939), it’s clear that we have entered a geo-political order where Russia is not our friend. (Sarah Palin must be smirking.) We will divide modern history into before 02/23/2022 and after 02/23/2022. Will this end up in the similar global turmoil that followed Hitler’s invasion of Poland? It seems entirely possible. Vladimir Putin is this generation’s murderous madmen with designs on expanding his empire by any means necessary. Putin’s statement Wednesday that nations that come to Ukraine’s defense will face “consequences you have never seen” is chilling given the fact that Russia holds 45% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Maybe this will be a limited conflict and, well, sorry freedom-loving Ukrainians. Yeah, it went sideways with Hitler, but Putin is an ethnic nationalist of a different stripe. It will be fine. Let’s get back to the other existential crises, like COVID and global warming. Why should Russian tanks rolling through Chernobyl be an issue in suburban America? It will be OK. Have you seen the price of milk? Let’s riot!

Of course, the good people of Ukraine didn’t think Russian bombs would be falling on their suburban neighborhoods either. A child Cozy’s age was killed today on the westside of Kyiv. Global conflicts have the tendency to spread. Quickly. Watching the children heading for the Polish border makes me wonder where I would send my daughter if the war spreads to this part of the world. Hopefully we can get her to Mexico if things get hot here. The United States is not guaranteed to exist forever. Four years of Trumpism weakened our democracy and greatly inflated Russia. That could create a cascade of crises that puts the USA in the rear view mirror. You may not be safe as you think.

The reason of this concern is rooted what I did in the first 12 hours of the invasion. I spent it on the dark corners of the web in the places where white supremacists, Qanon believers, and Trump nuts dwell. They, to the one, threw their support to Putin, seeing Biden’s policies as part of a liberal Jewish plot to push Putin and Trump’s buttons and cheered Putin’s fascistic ethnic nationalism. They want that wider war to launch their “boogaloo” race war in America. And they are armed. Heavily. Timothy McVeigh is their hero. The ethnic cleansing of Yugoslavia is their game plan. And Putin and Trump are their leaders.

Fortunately, like those Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island who defiantly said, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!” the majority of Americans have no tolerance for the anti-American “America First” con artists and their little boy soldiers. Yeah, 4.5 million viewers tune into white supremacist Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show each evening but that means that over 327 million Americans don’t. Hopefully, unlike Ukrainian citizens right now, we won’t all have to take crash courses in how to fire AR-15s. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and thoughtful mobilization. We’ll certainly have the time after Russian hackers take down Instagram. Maybe then we will see the toilet paper tube we are in.