Zelensky. In Each of Us is a Zelensky.
Christine Merser, June 4, 2025
Zelensky had me at hello. Three years ago.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The Ukrainian Embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted the following quote on February 26, 2022, after the United States offered to airlift him out of Kyiv. “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
I don’t think he’s made a misstep since.
The way he carries himself. The way he speaks. That calm, steady presence. You get the feeling that if you were crossing a busy street with him, you wouldn’t have to look either way before stepping off the curb. He’d have you covered.
He has every reason to be screaming, stomping, raging at the world.
If it were me? “You mother fuckers! We had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Do you remember what you asked us to do, and we did it?! And, now you are letting us die by the tens of thousands and our cities are gone in a heap of rubble!”
On December 5, 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, agreeing to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, which was the third-largest in the world at the time, in exchange for commitments from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and existing borders, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine. These assurances were provided in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon state.
He never mentions that. Or I haven’t heard him mention it.
You see, we must start looking at ‘our’ behavior, the behavior of our country and its lack of honor around the world and own it, and we must demand those running the country change the way we behave. If we are ever to be the country we thought we were, we must begin by being honest with ourselves about who we are and have been.
Back to the fabulous Zelensky.
And then, of course, there’s the infamous Oval Office scene, where the two bullies, TV, which is how I now refer to Trump and Vance because God knows they love a television set, thought they were squashing a bug. And he sat there and held his own, but not once did he smirk with the knowledge of what he had up his sleeve.
Come on, don’t you wonder if Biden knew about this plan? I am hoping he did. I am hoping that at some point it will occur to TV that Biden and his people knew. Ok, I realize that accomplishes nothing. Moving on.
First, please tell the media, and please don’t be one of those people who says it’s a Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was an assault by a country on an innocent country called the United States of America. They are not the Japanese. That is not what happened on June 1st. This was the Normandy landing. Russia assaulted Ukraine, and this was Ukraine’s Normandy. Not Pearl Harbor. Why the fuck can’t we get this stuff right? You can see the difference, right?
OK. And Zelensky and Team took out billions of dollars of aircraft that killed innocent Ukrainians and decimated cities with more than 100 drones that cost $500 apiece. Right under their noses. And the communications? Next door to the Russian communications headquarters. Priceless.
But the reason I want to write about all this is because it’s a lesson for this moment in time for all of us. We all have Zelensky in us. We are on the side of right. And we are smarter than them. Some of them are smart. The people behind Project 2025 are smart. But Stephen Miller? He’s not so smart. Trump? Vance? Musk? Not so smart really. Trump’s never been successful at anything other than becoming president. While you might think that’s a big deal, it’s really more our fault than his success. Vance, he’s the puppet boy for, who’s the guy who bankrolls him? Musk? Again, he never built anything. He just walked in afterward.
But Zelensky is thinking outside the box. And that’s what we have to do. We have to start fighting outside of the traditional lines. Not within the means available through traditional methodology.
It means having things in your car in case you have to stop when you see a raid, and start filming and texting friends to join you and realizing that our battle will be on the streets in our communities, not sitting on our couches leaving messages in DC that no one listens to. It will be in showing up on the doorsteps of those who are terrorizing our citizens and immigrants. It’s supporting colleges and law firms and letting them know that if they capitulate to these thugs they will lose more than if they don’t. It’s the little things every single day that we must start doing. It is smart posts on social media, not melatonin raising re-posts of ridiculous memes about TV and Co. It’s posting the facts of the bill coming up. It’s asking your friends to do the same.
Over and over again, so many people have written me or talked to me or written to others about how they just don’t know what to do. It seems overwhelming. How can one person in Portland, Maine, fight this? Well, we can.
Discipline. Resist everywhere you can. Resisting means spending your money in places where you are not supporting the enemy. Do you think Ukrainians are buying Russian products because they can get them delivered the same day? I don’t think so. Stop using Amazon. Stop advertising on Facebook.
Rachel Maddow agrees with me on this. Not that she and I have been talking about it, while we brush each other’s hair every day, but she thinks it’s going to come from small actions in community after community by millions of Americans who finally step forward the same way I do.
If you see ICE out there, you pull over and you start filming and you start texting your posse of five people that you previously set up, and they’ll be there in ten minutes. And the crowd will grow, and over and over again we’ll push them away. Look what happened in San Diego. Those women screaming at them, “Go ahead and shoot me, you bastards. Get out of here.” And in the end, they left.
We have to break it down little by little, piece by piece, slowly but surely.
Put a picture of Zelensky on your phone. Look at him. The only thing he was sure of when this all began was that he would never give up. Never never never give up. Churchill said it.
My posse and I are putting together a manual about how to put a posse together and what we’re going to do with it. We only need a few million posses. It’s really not that much.
Today I thank Zelensky. For showing me how to do it. For making me believe it can be done. That it should be done. That it will be done.
Great post. But no need to highlight the People Magazine part at the end. It diminishes Zelensky. IMO
Most extraordinary human of the year!