“Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!”

Rebekah Suzanne

When reading the news it sometimes feels like I am re-living the scene from the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow are all walking through the woods listening to unfamiliar sounds. Dorothy wonders aloud if there could be wild animals in the woods. Calmly the Tin Man tells them there are only lions, tigers and bears. That revelation leads them to repeat in more rapid and frantic succession the phrase that every American knows by heart:

“Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!”

US headlines are getting progressively more fearful regarding our strained relations with Putin’s Russia. The news only seems to get darker and more frightening; each story building on the next. What started with the Cold War has turned into an excuse to create a scapegoat, for every American failure, in the Kremlin. Instead of “Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!” it has turned to “Putin and Russia and ISIS! Oh my!”

In reading and re-reading US news articles, AP wire stories, US government press releases, British articles, Russian articles I came across a gem of an article that turns the Russian scapegoating on it’s ear.  It is an opinion piece from The Moscow Times written by Mark Galeotti .  

“It’s the Russians Wot Done It”   https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/its-the-russians-wot-done-it-58228

This article is a shining light of what news should be-especially in its opinion pieces-a rational look at multiple sides of an issue. Instead of running from imaginary beasts-the lions and tigers and bears-we are accountable as citizens to be well informed, to put our ever changing emotions to the side and divide wild accusation from fact. Fact alone is what is grounded in reality. My dad had a friend who passed away several years ago who was known for saying over and over that we must judge by “Results: often harsh but, always fair.”  As humans, fear will always be there to taunt us. Left unchecked, fear will only grow into more and more wild imaginations grounded less and less in reality.

If we want to create a great nation then we must be able to look evil in the face and call it evil. For too long Americans have called good evil and evil good. We have rewarded and coddled liars, thieves and cowards. As a nation based on Western government and ideology and people these actions grate against the core of who we are. A people who live in fear are already conquered. We are not the children of the conquered. We are the offspring of noble men, of heroes and legends. It is our destiny to make America great once more. It is our destiny to face the scary woods with strange noises and uncover that those who oppose us are nothing more than cowardly lions.