The heart-rending picture above, showing the ruins of a classroom at the Donbas State Technical University, in Lysychansk, Ukraine, was published in The New Yorker on August 1, 2022. The article, by Luke Mogelson, was titled, "Letter From The Donbas: The Desperate Lives Inside Ukraine’s Dead Cities."
Mogelson's story, like the picture, is heart-rending. I am drawing attention to it, mainly, because of the the following statement, which appeared just after the title of the story, serving as a kind of epigraph:
Since Russia shifted its vicious invasion to the east, ordinary people trapped on the front lines have faced missile storms and starvation—and have no source of help except one another.
In fact, that is the truth of the human situation in general. This observation applies to all of us, universally. It is often only in times of crisis, of emergency, that we understand this human truth: we have no source of help except one another.
Our differences, in which we could take delight (and I think in which we should take delight), are so often utilized as an emblem and confirmation of division.
But... that is really not the case. Not ultimately. That is not the actual truth of our human situation. We are, as I said yesterday (and not for the first time, and probably not for the last time, either) "all in this together."
That's the truth.
In Donbas or Detroit - in Washington (the District of Columbia), or Walla Walla, Washington, or in Waco, Texas - here is how things really are:
We have no source of help except one another.
Let's not wait until American cities start looking like cities in the Donbas to figure that out!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/01/the-desperate-lives-inside-ukraines-dead-cities
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