Zelenskyy is standing up to the world's worst billionaires—and their lickspittles

And that's why they hate him.

There’s not much to say about Friday's scatshow in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump and JD Vance have made clear their intentions to reward Putin for invading Ukraine (and attacking our elections) for years. They set up this skit to justify what they were always going to do. Volodymyr Zelenskyy—whom I’d call the greatest white man alive if it didn’t sound like a backhanded compliment—handled this assault on his country’s dignity and freedom beautifully, just as he has handled nearly all the key crises in his rise to lead his country in fending off the worst tyrant (so far) of our time.

If you’re reading this, you almost certainly agree with the Kyiv Independent’s headline in their must-read editorial: “A president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasn’t Zelensky.”

I could go into the fuckery that underlies this tragedy, how Trump attacked anyone for a decade now who suggested he was conspiring with Putin, even as he was openly conspiring with Putin.

But that is all prologue. We lost the saliency of this assault on our collective decency when Elon Musk bought the presidency for Trump and Putin.

So I want to point out why this is all happening since the spectacle of the how is so obnoxious and overwhelming that it is—like everything Elonald is trying to do to us now—purposely traumatizing.

Zelenskyy is all of us. He is the lone individual taking on the spirit of his community, which put its best faith in him through democratic governance.

Putin is the epitome of the billionaires who seek to rule us. He offers nothing but his boot on necks, either those you imagine as your enemies or you if you decide you’d like to be free.

To be fair, Trump has a pretty good defense for why he is not just a Putin suck-up, a Soviet agent since the '80s bent on reversing the Cold War to hand Russia a victory. His alibi is that he does not follow Putin because of kompromat or any quid pro quo. He aligns with Putin because he wants to be our Putin. And he knows that justice and democracy anywhere are a threat to Putins everywhere.

And that’s a pretty good defense! Rings true!

Trump wants the power to rule without any checks on his power. He wants to invade and rape neighbors with impunity. He wants to suck his people dry, looting them to collect unrecordable amounts of wealth. He wants to impose his reality on everyone who will ingest it and use it to torture everyone else.

And that’s what Elon Musk wants. That’s what Peter Thiel wants. And that’s what JD Vance, a man born middle class yet who has built his career entirely on regurgitating the farts of billionaires, wants. And JD is willing to lick spittle or play the scolding nursemaid to get it.

That demoralizing disgrace we witnessed in the Oval Office will live on in history for as long as it is told because it clarified the sides of the conflict of our time that will define humanity's future.

Trump/Vance/Putin v. Zelenskyy.

The people versus the billionaires.

My imagination buffers when I try to imagine a better representative for us all than Zelenskyy. Yes, he is imperfect, as any human being must be. But he remains unshaken in his belief that the only unacceptable outcome of this struggle is surrender.