Putin's war tests our resolve, patience -- March 10, 2022 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

The horrifying news from Ukraine has no end.

“Russian strike hits maternity hospital,” read the banner headline on page one of Thursday’s Washington Post.

“Conditions Worsen in Ukraine as War Enters 3rd Week,” was the dispiriting, early headline on The New York Times site. High-level talks between Russia and Ukraine failed again to agree on allowing civilians safe passage to escape the carnage, much less on a deal to end the fighting.

Meanwhile, more than 2.3 million people have somehow managed to flee the war-torn country, the U.N. reported Thursday.

In our nuanced age, few situations are black and white, but Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked, immoral, brutal assault on Ukraine has united most of the world against him.

President Joe Biden announced the United States will no longer buy Russian oil and gas, following stiff economic sanctions by the West against Russia and its oligarchs. Apple, McDonald’s and Starbucks, among others, have ceased sales in Russia.

All these actions are welcome but have not stopped Putin’s aggression.

What fresh hell is next? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is everyone’s candidate for Person of the Year, but the “no-fly” zone he desperately wants is apparently a non-starter. The West cannot risk escalating the conflict with an unpredictable foe armed with nuclear weapons.

And so we watch, united in unalloyed anger, as the suffering intensifies. Public buildings glow blue and yellow. Blue and yellow ribbons wave on tree branches. The Ukrainian flag flies. A hand lettered sign in a window in my neighborhood reads:

“Putin

“Liar

“Killer.”

That sums him well. I would add monster and madman.  

And yet our daily lives continue apace. Truckers drive around Washington’s Beltway to protest pandemic restrictions that are ending anyway.

Biden warned gas prices, which have been rising overnight, would rise still more with the cut-off of Russian oil.

The national average price of a gallon of gas was $4.318 Thursday, and the average cost for a gallon of regular in Virginia was $4.241, according to AAA. No one knows how high prices will go or how pain at the pump will affect tourism and other parts of the economy that were just starting to recover. 

So far, most Americans – 63% -- are willing to pay more at the pump to support democracy in Ukraine, a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken March 7-8 reported.

One in four said they’d pay “as much as it takes,” 11% said they’d pay $2 more a gallon than currently, 32% would pay $1 to $2 more and 31% said they were willing to pay less than $1.

One wonders how long support will last, though, if the cost of nearly everything keeps soaring. Prices rose 7.9% over the past year, the highest level in four decades. The February inflation report released Thursday reflects prices before the war in Ukraine.

Many Republicans condemn the Russian invasion, and even Biden’s predecessor  has stopped calling Putin “smart” and “savvy.” The Reuters/Ipsos survey also found 80% of Americans want political leaders to provide a unified front in support of Ukraine instead of attacking their rivals.

But political fighting has not taken a vacation. Congressional Republicans wrongly blame Democrats for high gas prices, claiming Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and other policies have hiked prices. Fact-checkers say those policies are not to blame.  

The National Republican Congressional Committee lashed out at Democratic Reps. Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton of Virginia for doing “nothing” about high gas prices. “Their war on American energy is to blame for the pain Virginians are feeling at the pump,” the NRCC tweeted.

Oh, please.

What can individuals do now? We can try not to complain (too much) about the price of gas and remember who really is to blame.

We can donate to charities that are bravely helping Ukraine and Ukrainians who have fled their country. Beware, though, despicable scam artists who use names similar to reputable charities to trick donors.

We can prepare to welcome the Ukrainian refugees who want to settle here. And we can steel ourselves to conditions getting worse, and maybe a lot worse, in Ukraine.

Now is the time to take a stand. If Putin wins in Ukraine, where will his lust for former Soviet territories stop?

And we can learn from Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who wrote in “War and Peace,” the two most powerful warriors are patience and time. Let them be on our side.

© 2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Stakes high for Biden in State of the Union address -- Feb. 24, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he’ll almost certainly start a sentence with: “The state of the union is . . .”

But how will he end it?

Presidents long have struggled to find the right word. In 1949, Harry Truman said the state of the union was “good,” which sounds like a gentleman’s C.

“Not good” Gerald Ford said in 1975, a few months after Nixon resigned. A year later, Ford said it was “better . . . but still not good enough.”

And a few months after that, voters sent Ford packing, in favor of a peanut farmer from Georgia who later described the state of the union as “sound.”

In 1983, Ronald Reagan – or a clever speechwriter -- found a model way to end to the sentence. “The state of our union is strong, but our economy is troubled,” he declared.

Ah, positivity and empathy. Good balance. Almost all presidents in the decades since have echoed Reagan that the state of the nation is strong and putting their spin on how to make it a “more perfect union.”

Biden’s address, delayed by COVID-19 protocols, comes at a perilous time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reckless invasion of Ukraine this week threw the world into chaos. But even before the invasion, Americans were in a sour mood. Inflation, soaring gas prices, supply chain disruptions, the lingering pandemic, the fall of Afghanistan and other woes have dampened, if not extinguished, the hopeful flame that accompanied Biden’s inauguration last year.

Almost two-thirds (64%) of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls Jan. 14 to Feb. 22.

Biden’s job approval rating is in the low 40s, and Congress’s is worse. Only 21% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.

Gallup’s Mood of the Nation Survey last month found deep dissatisfaction with democracy itself. Only 30% of those surveyed said they were somewhat or very satisfied with our system of government and how it works.

No one wants to hear the president say the state of the union is grim and distressing. This is one of those times when such candor is not reassuring. We don’t need to be reminded about what we know all too well.

This State of the Union address is Biden’s opportunity to showcase his perspective and long experience -- in the Senate, as former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as vice president – on the world stage. He needs to use the bully pulpit calmly.

The White House still believes it has done a poor job of accentuating the positive accomplishments of the last year. So Biden is likely to tout more than 6 million jobs created, the drop in the unemployment rate from 6.2% to 3.9% and plunging unemployment rolls – from more than 18 million to 2 million.

He also is likely to praise his new Supreme Court nominee, which he has said he will name by the end of February. Biden has more class than to turn the announcement into a reality TV moment in which the cameras pan to the winner. Please.

As the midterm elections loom, some will urge Biden to do what many of his predecessors have done: appease various constituencies with a laundry list of legislative items that have little chance of seeing the light of day.

If Biden resists that temptation and says something like the union is “strong, but . . . ,” and focuses on his priorities, he could strike a tone that is at once optimistic and realistic. Times being what they are, some Republicans will guffaw no matter what he says.

The world’s precarious situation may draw more viewers to Biden’s speech than in less stressful times. They want to hear the president address the international crisis and the economy with a thoughtful, steady voice.

He needs to explain why what happens in Ukraine is important to the United States, his sanctions and why they will succeed. On the economy, he needs to explain how his strategy will address the sectors that have not yet recovered.

This is a high stakes moment for the president and the state of the union.

© 2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved. 

 Hands off our Wordle! -- Column of Feb. 17, 2022

By MARSHA MERCER

“Well, I thought I might be above fads but I was wrong,” my friend Larry, a physician, wrote on Facebook. “I’m addicted to Wordle.”

Who isn’t? The wildly popular word game has many of us hooked.

Wordle is fun, and it’s a friendly challenge. It transports you from everyday cares.

Worried about the high cost of, well, everything? Wordle is free, at least for now. Worried about the state of American politics and culture? Wordle is a politics-free zone.

Solving Wordle brings people together in a shared activity that makes each of us think for ourselves.

I bet if Putin played Wordle, he wouldn’t need to amass Russian troops on the border with Ukraine to feel like Somebody. He’d get a sense of personal accomplishment -- without starting a war. And, yes, there is a version in Russian.

Wordle, in case you’ve not played yet, is simple. You get six tries to guess a five-letter word. With each try, if the correct letter is in the right place, the letter turns green. If it’s the correct letter in the wrong place, it turns yellow. Letters that are not in the word are gray.

The game has a charming back story. Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, created it as a gift for his partner, who loves word games. Wardle named the game Wordle as a play on his last name.

He released the game free to the public in October. It caught on as players shared their winning Wordle diagrams on social media.

The New York Times, which offers games in print and by subscription, bought the rights for Wordle for a price in “in the low seven figures” Jan. 31 and says it is keeping it free for new and existing users “initially.”

It didn’t take long for players to begin griping. Some complain the game is more difficult now with words like cynic and caulk.

Originally, there was one word of the day for everyone worldwide, which meant everyone could compare scores and strategy. On Feb. 15, though, two words were winners. Depending on the platform, the winning word was either agora or aroma.

On the original U.K. site, the winning word was agora, while on the Times site aroma won. This reportedly was a temporary glitch caused by moving to the Times platform. The Times is also removing offensive and obscure words from the game’s dictionary.

Part of the genius of Wordle is its limits. You can play only once a day, with a new word coming at midnight.

For the truly addicted, however, there are many knockoffs. Some free versions allow you to adjust the number of letters and to play endless rounds. It’s very possible to waste a lot of time on Hello Wordl (no e), said the voice of experience.

Another version is Absurdle -- fiendishly difficult because you’re playing against artificial intelligence that changes the five-letter target word as you play. It gave me a headache.

For the high brow, the Folger Shakespeare Library unveiled Prattle. Players can choose to guess words ranging from four to 11 letters, each from one of the library’s Shakespeare texts.

A joy of Wordle is touching base – commiserating or celebrating – with friends and family via Wordle scores. For Denyse Holt, 80, of Lincolnwood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Wordle became more than a diversion.

Holt awoke in the middle of the night on Feb. 6 to find a bleeding, naked man holding scissors standing over her. The man would hold her hostage in her home for more than 20 hours.

When Holt didn’t text her older daughter her daily Wordle score, and when she didn’t respond to texts or calls, her daughters, who live in California and Oregon, got worried.

The family contacted police for a wellness check. Police found Holt locked in a basement bathroom. The intruder, who had broken in through a window, was still in the house. He was subdued, arrested and taken to jail on several charges.

So, the Times may think it bought a fad that it can monetize, but it also bought a way millions of people connect with each other in a crazy, fractured time.

Don’t mess with our Wordle!

©2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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