When I was in 4th grade my father brought home bottles of chocolate covered grasshoppers and chocolate coated crickets. Dad gave me two plastic medicine-style bottles, one crickets, one grasshoppers. I brought the crickets to school and left them in my desk. Over the weeks they had half melted.
    During the last days of school the teacher had us clear out our desks. The girl Mrs. Heinlein had placed me next to was not pleasant. She obviously disliked me for no reason at all, so much so I avoided saying anything to her. We simply didn’t speak and the few times I tried she really did stick her nose in the air and turn away. That’s not hyperbole. You know, one of those situations where someone takes an instant dislike to you for no apparent reason.
    Maybe it was just one of those girls hate boys and boys hate girls things at that age, though I swear I had no feelings about her either way, and was puzzled regarding her animosity.
    So during the last days of 4th grade Mrs. Heinlein had us clean out our desks. That day I placed the medicine bottle filled with crickets on the desk and continued to clean. She must have looked because she screamed softly. I smiled before I raised my head, so she wouldn’t see my smirk, then raising my head very calmly, minus the smile, and put the closed container in my pocket. Some gotcha moments are delicious, unlike my cricket questionable delicacy.
    I had tried one or two of the cricket and the grasshoppers when Dad first gave them to me. In case you’re curious they didn’t taste “bad,” just mediocre’ chocolate with an earthy crunch.
    I pity those poor crickets and grasshoppers now.
    Month after month the Republican House have acted like that snotty girl, sticking their nose up at crucial Ukraine aid. Sticking their nose up for the slightest reason at speaker after, and being outright ugly those who sit next to them: even from the same party if they’re not MAGA enough. So when Mike Johnson got Ukraine aid passed I swear I could hear an echo of that 4th grade girly, childish, scream from the likes of MTG, Hawley and other MAGA performance-based pols; those who wish Putin gets no resistance to his plot to reconquer the eastern block nations, by whatever means possible. Throwing Russian citizens on the flames of war. Bombing schools. Targeting apartments. Shelling train stations. Kidnapping children and selling them to Russian parents so they’ll become indoctrinated.
    The lives of Ukrainians mean no more to Putin and his ilk that the crickets did to me. In the screams of the MAGA drama queens when someone does anything that doesn’t serve Putin and his former POTUS puppet’s interests I hear my former 4th grade neighbor. But unlike my meager tastings, Putin has an insatiable desire to gobble all of Ukraine up and not stop at any border.
    The obvious hitch is how damn hard this was to do to get more aid this time. Anyone think it will get easier next time?
    Ha!
    So NOW what?
    First we MUST vote out as many of the Putin/Trump enablers as possible, get rid of as many as possible via the ballot box. It’s not going to be easy with severe gerrymandering, eliminating politically inconvenient polling stations or providing few machines, broken down machines, purging, armed thugs eager to challenge politically inconvenient voters, rules made by those in power now that allows them to negate the voting voice of the people, drop box elimination, and as always the joyless DeJoy post office eager to do anything to sabotage mail in votes.
    Maybe you don’t remember, but Millie and I do: boxes specifically designed to rip stamps off the same size envelopes mail in votes are in.
    I think back to Vietnam where Russia and China did what we are doing now: supplying those who fought those they consider invaders, conquerors. Take note, Ukrainians, part of their success was waiting out the enemy, like in tunnels. Ukrainian warriors need such back up plans if Putin gets what he wants. And we need to fund them. Ukraine needs to compete with Afghanistan for being the graveyard of empires.
    I understand. Uncle Ho was NO “uncle,” and a brutal man. But the brutality here is on the other side, “brutality” being an incredible understatement. If, as a nation, someone like Putin can just wait us and Ukrainians out we might as well let Trump win. Then he and Putin can mimic the Stalin/Hitler pact. Divide up the world.
    You KNOW that’s the ultimate goal.
    Ukraine so far, like the rest of the crickets in my mouth back then, and the chocolate covered grasshoppers in my other container, have resisted being crunched out of existence, the first tasty morsel among many of Putin’s menu. These days I feel like the grasshopper or cricket in Putin’s mouth, and Trump wants to help this insatiable modern day successor to Vlad the Impaler feed. I am willing to do whatever I must, legally, to stop that. Ukrainians are just first on the menu.
    Letting Ukraine lose, well, it just ain’t cricket.

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    “Inspection” is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 50 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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