March 5 at 9 am Pacific, noon Eastern time

The crisis in Ukraine has forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes into neighboring countries. Families are in need of assistance. If you would like to donate you can do so here:  www.gofundme.com/f/teddy-bears-for-ukrainian-children?fbclid=IwAR1L5wu7hSqB0UdlyC7YyylEfEl1dLoUChp3olwL3xRxNEGk06A_-eGAXT0   Please join the ONE LOVE SYNCHRONIZED MEDITATION Saturday, March 5 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern / 6pm in Poland The Live Broadcast will be from Oswiecim, the location of Auschwitz, Poland. Sponsored by May Peace Prevail On Earth International ~ with One Humanity Institute, Global Silent Minute, Children of the Earth, Source of Synergy Foundation, SINE Network, Unity Earth and Unify.org.  Join us on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82446174949  Or watch on Facebook at Facebook.com/maypeaceprevailonearth

The rare transgender female who plays sports may have little advantage — or no advantage at all.

Thomas O’Donnell Guest columnist

• Thomas R. O’Donnell is a longtime Iowa reporter, editor and science writer and blogs at IowaScienceInterface.com.

March 4, 2022 (desmoinesregister.com)

A bill signed into law Thursday by Gov. Kim Reynolds aims to save Iowans from a society-threatening scourge.

Not COVID-19 or climate change. It’s transgender girls who want to play sports with their friends.

House File 2416 prohibits transgender females from playing women’s sports at Iowa high schools and colleges. Only cisgender females — ones who have a gender corresponding to the sex assigned at birth — can compete in girls and women’s basketball, soccer, track and other sports, as of now. Those assigned male at birth must sit out or compete in boys’ and men’s events — no matter what gender they present as or whether they’re transitioning or have transitioned to female.

Many Republicans are sounding the alarm, saying transgender females threaten the very existence of sports for women and girls. Letting them participate “will do away with girls’ sports and it’s just not fair,” Gov. Kim Reynolds warned. In the Iowa House of Representatives, Orange City Republican Skyler Wheeler asserted: “This bill is not about discrimination. It’s about protection.”

More:Iowa’s ban on transgender girls in female sports is destined for a lawsuit, experts say. Will it hold up?

More:Editorial: Iowa Republicans take a victory lap as they inflict suffering with law restricting trans girls

But a more sober examination employing math, science and common sense finds that Iowans needn’t fear that legions of muscular former males will grab all the trophies and medals.

The math: The Iowa Department of Education’s puts the state’s K-12 enrollment at 484,159 students. Statistics are few, but a 2017 peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated 390 out of 100,000 Americans are transgender. Applied to Iowa’s school population, that’s about 1,888 students.

The bills, however, apply only to transgender females. Surveys, such as Social Security records and surgical statistics, indicate that transgender males (assigned-at-birth females transitioning to male) are more prevalent than females — perhaps as much as 65% to 35%. For the sake of argument, let’s say half — 944 — of the estimated 1,888 transgender students are female. 

But that includes elementary-age students, whose sex-based physical differences are less significant and who aren’t yet playing school-based organized sports. That means the relevant number of transgender students is undoubtedly far less, maybe half again: 472, spread across 327 school districts. So, on average, perhaps one or two students in a district may be a middle- or high-school transgender female. 

Obviously, the number will be larger at big schools and perhaps zero at small schools. But it’s still a tiny number that gets even tinier because only some transgender students want to play sports. In any school, there are band kids and theater kids and sports kids. 

These few transgender females hardly pose an existential threat to girls sports. But if lawmakers continue to insist that transgender females play men’s soccer or basketball, the students also will have to share locker rooms and showers with cisgender boys. Is that what legislators want? Do they really want to humiliate these youths?

The science: For transgender children, the unwanted bodily changes associated with puberty can be distressing, perhaps even deadly with some considering suicide. Loving parents ensure their offspring get treatment, including, in many cases, pubertal blockers — drugs that temporarily delay the onset of adolescence while children clarify their feelings. That means some, if not most, transgender females will forgo the testosterone surge that gives them a theoretical athletic edge.

I say “theoretical” because it’s unclear that transgender females really are physically superior to cisgender females. As Dr. Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, told public radio in May 2021, cisgender men may perform better than cisgender females, “but a cisgender man is not a transgender woman.” The hormone treatments many transgender females receive limit or eliminate any potential testosterone benefit. The rare transgender female who plays sports may have little advantage — or no advantage at all.

California has let students choose whether to play boys or girls sports based on their self-perception, regardless of their birth gender, since 2013. Nonetheless, in a state with nearly 40 million people, no transgender girls are dominating sports leagues, Turban noted. If they were, transgender rights opponents would be sure to say so.

The common sense: Athletes of any gender can have a genetic edge, such as a 6-foot, 1-inch cisgender female volleyball player, a long-legged cisgender female hurdler, or a big-boned cisgender female softball catcher. Athletes everywhere capitalize on genetic differences to win in sports.

But success goes beyond genetics to natural ability, dedication and training, all accessible to anyone. Ask any guy who’s had a woman hand him his head on a basketball court or softball diamond.

So, if the risk of a transgender female dominating an Iowa sport is insignificant, there must be another reason Iowa Republicans want to block them.

I wonder what it is.

Thomas R. O’Donnell is a longtime Iowa reporter, editor and science writer and blogs at IowaScienceInterface.com. He lives in rural Keosauqua. Find this essay at Iowa Capital Dispatch, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: kobradovich@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

(Contributed by Janet Cornwell, H.W., m.)

Art

Art (or Temperance) is numbered fourteen and usually shows the figure of a young woman or angelic being, who is pouring water from one vessel into another. Not a single drop is spilt. This card is related to the union and harmonisation of opposites.

Art shows us that those among us who allow a free flow of life force use it the most effectively, wasting the least and achieving most. If we are thoughtful, receptive and in harmony, we allow the Higher Powers to run unhindered through our spirits and emotions – and finally into our daily lives.

Life is a river. Instead of clinging on to a rock let go and become part of the water. Find the still point within and live from that point and by doing that our hopes and dreams come closer.

(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman)

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Cynthia Sue Larson, MBA, hosts Living the Quantum Dream on the DreamVisions7 radio network. She is author of Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World, also Quantum Jumps and The Aura Advantage. Here she describes unusual case histories she has been collecting for the past twenty years involving disruptions of normal reality. This includes objects suddenly appearing out of nowhere, objects disappearing and then returning, people traveling long distances in an impossibly short amount of time, and instances when masses of people remember events that did not occur in this timeline. This latter phenomenon is known as the Mandela Effect. She believes that these events cannot simply be attributed to faulty memory. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). (Recorded on July 7, 2020)

TED Concerned about the war Ukraine? You’re not alone. Historian Yuval Noah Harari provides important context on the Russian invasion, including Ukraine’s long history of resistance, the specter of nuclear war and his view of why, even if Putin wins all the military battles, he’s already lost the war. (This talk and conversation, hosted by TED global curator Bruno Giussani, was part of a TED Membership event on March 1, 2022. Visit http://ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)

“A hypochondriac asks, “Is this normal?”
–Bernardo Kastrup

“A neurotic asks, “Am I normal?”
–Mike Zonta, BB editor

Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch computer scientist and philosopher who has published fundamental theoretical reflections on the mind – matter – problem in Scientific American and other renowned journals. (iai.tv)

The Sun March 3, 2022 HEART-WARMING moment the Ukraine Parliament erupts into singing of the national anthem as Russia targets ‘key buildings’ in the capital of Kyiv. The footage, posted to Twitter by Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko, shows people in the meeting singing the Ukrainian National Anthem while some held their hands to their chest. Around 300 MPs attended the meeting, which was held “under secrecy” to discuss critical legislation, Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik said on Thursday, as attacks continued in the Kyiv region. Read more: Horror pics show wrecked Russian army as Ukraine claims Putin has lost 9k troops with ’45 coffins sent back to one town’ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1783224… The Sun newspaper brings you the latest breaking news videos and explainers from the UK and around the world Become a Sun Subscriber and hit the bell to be the first to know Read The Sun: http://www.thesun.co.uk Like The Sun on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesun/ Follow The Sun on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSun Subscribe to The Sun on Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/The…#Russia#Ukraine

Photo by Amaresh V Narro/Eyepix/Barcroft/Getty

David Matthew Doyleis a senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Exeter whose research examines social identities, relationships and health with the aim of remediating social disparities. He leads the project AFFIRM Relationships, funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council, which will investigate changes in psychosocial functioning and social relationships among transgender people after beginning gender-affirming hormone therapy.

Edited by Matt Huston

1 March 2022 (psyche.co)

Tales of transformation can range from the hopeful, as in the case of the fairy tale of the Little Mermaid, to the absurd, as in Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis (1915). Imagine a tale of your own: you awake one day to find that, wherever you go, others identify you as someone you are not and treat you as such. After preparing your morning coffee, the barista tells her colleague that the latte is for ‘that person over there’, describing someone who doesn’t look the way you know yourself to look and pointing in your direction. In this confusing state, you would plead with others for recognition and affirmation. For many transgender people, this absurdist mental exercise is not an exercise at all, but a lived reality.

Having our identities affirmed by others is a fundamental aspect of human social life. As the sociologist Charles Horton Cooley suggested in 1902, we come to know ourselves not just through our own introspection, but also through our understanding of how others in society see us. This concept has been labelled the ‘looking-glass self’, as we use others’ perceptions of us to help define who we are and, in some cases, who we might want to become.

However, it can be exceedingly difficult to see oneself clearly if one’s looking glass becomes fogged due to persistent miscategorisation by others. This is often the case for transgender people whose social identities are not consistently recognised or affirmed. In 2003, the social psychologists Manuela Barreto and Naomi Ellemers wrote an authoritative review of the consequences of discrepancies between internal and external identity categorisations – in other words, how we see ourselves and how others see and treat us. They argued that such discrepancies can sometimes lead people to reassert their own identities in an attempt to correct inaccurate external views, which can take a psychological toll on the individual if stubborn resistance is encountered.

Transgender people must also contend with a social identity that is highly stigmatised across most societies, risking frequent exposure to prejudice and discrimination as well as aggression and even physical violence. Such stigma has clear negative implications for health and wellbeing. This is a primary reason that transgender people tend to suffer from higher rates of many mental and physical illnesses throughout their lives. Given such dire circumstances, it is vital to provide insight into points of resilience for transgender people, including ones that are shaped by their social environment.

Being proud of who one is might offer some protection when one is treated unfairly, even for members of stigmatised groups

To better understand the significance of identity affirmation for transgender people, my colleagues at the University of Exeter and I recently conducted a study with transgender participants who told us about their experiences with discrimination, identity and wellbeing (treated in our research as a combination of life satisfaction and self-esteem). As in past work, we found that transgender people who experienced more discrimination generally had poorer wellbeing. But the results also suggested that pride in one’s transgender identity can buffer this association. That is, experiences of discrimination seemed to be less harmful to the wellbeing of transgender people who felt greater pride in their transgender identities and greater solidarity with other transgender people. These results echo similar findings with members of other marginalised groups. In short, being proud of who one is might offer some protection when one is treated unfairly, even for members of stigmatised groups.

We also found evidence that the affirmation of one’s gender identity by others was a significant determinant of wellbeing for our participants. Transgender people who said that others tended to use their chosen names and pronouns – rather than ‘dead names’ (chosen by parents at birth) or pronouns referring to an incorrect gender identity – reported greater wellbeing overall. Particularly illuminating was that this link between external affirmation and wellbeing seemed to be accounted for, at least in part, by greater clarity in one’s own self-concept (assessed by agreement with statements such as ‘In general, I have a clear sense of who I am and what I want’ ). This suggests that when transgender people receive recognition and validation of their true identities, they come to see themselves more clearly, and that this self-insight is in part what supports wellbeing for transgender people.

These findings underscore the importance of strong and supportive social relationships to transgender people throughout a gender identity transition and beyond. We have recently conducted a systematic review of qualitative research on the social experiences of transgender people and their relational partners. From this review of dozens of relevant studies, we concluded that relationships marked by open communication and supportive elements can bolster health and wellbeing for transgender people throughout the life course and aid in positive identity development. This is true of their relationships with people both inside and outside the LGBTQ+ community. A transgender participant in one of our recent interview studies, who is also a service provider working with transgender clients, noted:

My immediate aim is to make them feel relaxed … that I understand them and will not judge them no matter how they present themselves in terms of clothes and other aspects of their presentation.

It is crucial that well-intentioned relational partners actively affirm the identities that transgender people express

Open discussions about gender identity, in which both transgender people and their relational partners question and challenge gender norms and societal restrictions, can strengthen those relationships. Unfortunately, hostile and ambivalent experiences are also relatively common in transgender people’s social relationships, which can reinforce stigma. The importance of these different types of social experiences was highlighted by another transgender study participant, who told us:

I was never particularly high-key in my dysphoria, until it came to interacting with other people. It was [more] about them and how they saw me than how I saw myself.

In many parts of the world, if transgender people are even able to access medical gender identity services in the first place, waiting lists can extend for months or even years. This waiting period can be particularly fraught, as transgender people might not be able to physically ‘pass’ as their gender, making social gender affirmation potentially even more important to their identities and wellbeing. It is crucial that well-intentioned relational partners actively affirm the identities that transgender people express, including through their changes in dress and mannerisms, and even absent any particular physical changes.

It is worth noting that affirming someone’s identity is not about being perfect or never making a mistake. Recent experimental work that we have conducted confirms that people who are not transgender understandably worry about accidentally using incorrect pronouns and language when interacting with transgender people. While not ideal, such mistakes are of course natural to some extent and do not necessarily signify ill will. Interactions between members of different social groups have the potential to provoke anxiety, but they often go better than people expect. Therefore, efforts to educate people about the importance of affirming the identities of transgender friends, family members and strangers could reap benefits not only for transgender people’s wellbeing but also for their own.

Ultimately, gender identity affirmation is about respect for transgender people and their human dignity. It is not for society to dictate the truth of an individual’s existence. What we can and should do is focus on our own ability to help others feel seen as their true selves, nurturing social environments that support mutual recognition and affirmation for all people and their multitudinous social identities. By recognising and affirming the various identities we express, we can celebrate our shared humanity.

Pisces New Moon

The Pisces New Moon tells us that, if there’s a time to be celebratory and hopeful, it’s now! Or, at least, this message is expressed in the New Moon conjunct Jupiter, the planet most associated with good tidings and expansive opportunities. Pisces, itself, offers a certain spaciousness, as it’s typically associated with the fewest boundaries. Even if we are in a confined space, Pisces lets us escape for a while in some other way — whether emotionally, mentally, etc. We can always find a route to somewhere else through this sign.

This is best demonstrated by thinking of the Piscean seascape where oceans merge and lead to other lands. There are, of course, certain borders delineated by humans, and we respect those or pay a price for not doing so. But in nature itself, the vast sea allows passage to other places, despite sea walls, political borders, and similar restrictions people dare to impose.

Obviously, things have become more delineated and restricted under the strains of COVID-19 in recent years — a factor we can’t deny or ignore. But perhaps we witness just that little bit more freedom or loosening of restrictions in some areas, finally, as we get closer to the spring equinox.

Neptune is a little further on in the Piscean stellium but, even so, Jupiter and Neptune are co-dispositors of the Moon in the sign of The Fishes. These are two of the most freedom-oriented planets, echoing one another in the desire for a bit more space, in one way or another. Neptune often helps us loosen our imagination, while Jupiter assists with viewing a wider vista. These two qualities together may mean that we see ourselves in different places, doing different things. Maybe a big plan is going to seem more within reach soon. Perhaps we will have the facility to link with more people, also.

The Moon is separating from a sextile aspect with Uranus in Taurus — which is interesting because this planet also has associations with freedom. But, whilst Neptune maybe merges us with others, and Jupiter lets us communicate on a greater platform through learning other languages and sharing more ideas, Uranus is strongly associated with individuality and what makes us different from one another. It is quite possible that we’re moving a bit away from pointing out all those differences! Instead, we are ready to see past them and realize the ways in which we are most similar. On this basis, perhaps we experience less conflict and more ease — something many people will likely welcome.

Some of the most spiritual connections may also appear for us during this lunation. Inspiration arises for all kinds of creative endeavors and projects, large and small, as we realize just how much we are, indeed, connected. Some connections may be sensed only, and hard to put into words — but that doesn’t matter. Even if we can only utter the start of something, or feel what we need to feel, so much else that is good will surely follow!

Visually, the planets are obviously gathered across just five signs of the zodiac at this time, occupying only one hemisphere. As charts are set with 0° Aries rising, we might not focus so much on the specific hemisphere, like the fact that there’s a notably occupied space opposite a clearly emptier space. The bowl shape — from Marc Edmund Jones’s theory — is significant here, emphasizing a self-contained quality, where there’s less reliance on others. It might well be that we’re, oddly, just so much more content with what’s around us and what’s going on inside! Here, we find new freedom.

This article is from the Mountain Astrologer written by Diana McMahon Collis

How the comedian turned Ukrainian president gained control of something no army can wrest away: the narrative. 

BY MICHAEL IDOV February 27, 2022 (gq.com)

As I write this, Volodymyr Zelensky, the most improbable national leader in the world, just might be the world’s most popular. By now everyone knows his life story’s surreal outline: a comedian who rose to fame with a portrayal of a president becomes the real thing, then transcends it.

The erstwhile Ukrainian voice of Paddington Bear, the star of a dozen shitty comedies and one decent one, he first stared down Trump over their “perfect” phone call—if you recall, 45 tried making aid to Ukraine conditional on a “small favor,” i.e. a sham investigation into the Bidens, and got impeached for his troubles—and is now staring down Putin on the streets of his besieged capital.

A huge part of Zelensky’s global resonance is that he seems to fit a type everyone knows the world over, because, thanks to millennia of persecution, the type exists the world over: a Jewish wiseacre. The idea of one of those (of us, I should say), becoming a wartime icon is in itself a perfect Jewish joke. It’s Woody Allen in Bananas, it’s Dustin Hoffman in Ishtar, it’s Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder. Except in real life. Risking real death.

The true story of 44-year-old Zelensky’s rise is a tad more complicated, and speaks more to the incredibly messy cultural tangle that exists between Russia and Ukraine than to any easy stereotype. His business and comedy roots lie in KVN, a longtime Russian showbiz phenomenon whose title is an acronym for a musty Sovietism—“The Club for the Jolly and the Resourceful.” KVN is a bizarre but admittedly original concept: Imagine if sketch comedy functioned as a pro sport, with city teams battling one another for a spot in the major league, and the top matches televised.

Zelensky’s troupe, called Quarter 95, repped Kryvyi Rih—a Ukrainian city—but performed in Russian, which was then considered not only normal but expected. He was team captain (under the nickname “Vovan”). Once Quarter 95 hit the big time on Russian TV, Zelensky and two partners, Sergei and Boris Shefir, formed a production company under the same name. Their studio produced dozens of shows and events for both countries’ markets, including the Ukrainian Dancing with the Stars, which Zelensky himself won in 2006 (and yes, that would be like Simon Cowell winning America’s Got Talent).

Around the same time, Zelensky began to produce, co-write, and sometimes star in trashy Russian comedies, most of them directed by a U.S.-educated filmmaker named Marius Vaysberg. The first one is representative: 2009’s Love in the City, about three friends living it up in New York when a curse from a magic fairy (played, in a moment of either inclusivity or homophobia or both, by flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov) leaves them impotent until they find true love.

Even as he turned toward politics, Zelensky didn’t exactly leave his comedy career in the rearview. His latest and likely last comedy, I You He She, came out in theaters the same month he became president—surely a historic first. Amazingly, on some of these Russian movies, Zelensky worked with the people now de facto wishing for his death: Both his director and his co-star on An Office Romance, Sarik Andreasyan and Marat Basharov, have publicly cheered the invasion of Ukraine.

Servant of the People, the 2015 sitcom that made Zelensky a true public figure, was a huge improvement over his other work. It was a well-filmed and heartfelt satire of Ukrainian politics, daring to imagine a fundamentally decent man in the halls of power (think Mr. Smith Goes to Kyiv). Interestingly, Zelensky still played his part in Russian. He divested from Quarter 95 to run for office, but named his party “Servant of the People” after the series, providing a remarkably smooth continuity from KVN to politics; that’s also when he finally switched languages.

Zelensky’s landslide 2019 victory against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko seemed like the wildest plot twist imaginable. In fact, things could have been crazier still: Running alongside him in the same election was one of Ukraine’s best rock singers, Slava Vakarchuk of the band Okean Elzy, who unlike Zelensky never performed in Russian. Vakarchuk was not just a plausible candidate but the first choice for a large swath of progressive youth, who viewed Zelensky’s feel-good centrism as a barely acceptable Plan B. The fear was—ironically—that he would get too cozy with Russia.

As president, Zelensky’s peacetime domestic record was so-so. Several of his Quarter 95 colleagues followed him into government, which raised eyebrows. Promising to fight corruption, he had instead, in the judgment of the Wilson Center at the two-year mark of his presidency, “constructed an informal vertical that is far from any good governance or rule of law principles.” He skirted the limits of presidential power in a democracy by straight-up banning three unfriendly TV networks. As the Russian forces massed at the borders, he played a murky game of managing expectations that seemed to frustrate everyone involved. As late as February 21, 2022, the chief editor of the Kyiv Independent was calling Zelensky “dispiritingly mediocre” in an angry op-ed: “Gestures, for him,” she wrote, “are more important than consequences.”

Two days later, Russia invaded.

Suddenly, the right gestures were not just welcome but essential. Mere hours into the war, it was blindingly obvious that, while the Russians might overpower Ukraine militarily, the Ukrainians had grabbed firm control over something no army could wrest away: the narrative. In other words, they achieved unsurpassable meme superiority. The phrase “Put some seeds in your pockets” barely requires explanation any more. Random dudes interrupting live broadcasts become viral stars. The Ukrainian brand of defiant, fatalistic, healthily filthy humor, harkening back to the shtetl and to the Cossacks both, has taken over the world. There seems to be a straight line from the Zaporozhians’ mythical 1676 reply to the Turkish sultan (“By land and by sea we will battle with thee. Fuck thy mother”) to “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” And at the top of it all stands Zelensky himself. No man has gone from joke to legend faster.

It took three statements, each a turning point. The first was the speech on the eve of the war, delivered, once again, in Russian and aimed at the people of Russia. “You’ve been told I’m going to bomb Donbass,” Zelensky said, countering the official Kremlin justification for the strike. “Bomb what? The stadium where me and the local guys cheered for our team at Euro 2012? The bar where we drank when they lost? Luhansk, where my best friend’s mom lives?”

He name-checked the arena, the street where the bar stood, the bar itself; he was acting like a parent of an abducted child in a movie, addressing the abductor on TV news and saying the child’s name over and over. It was an incredibly savvy double play—Zelensky clearly knew this tactic was a Hollywood cliche of sorts, and used it for both its direct purpose (humanize Ukrainians) and its meta-purpose (Putin is a serial killer).

The second game-changing communication was his terse and immediately legendary response to the Americans offering to evacuate him from the capital: “I need ammo, not a ride.” The third was even simpler. It was a humble front-camera video shot on the night-time streets of Kyiv, Cabinet members flanking him like a defiant posse, with one message to Ukraine and the world: “We’re still here.”

The memeification of Zelensky is overwhelming in its instanteity. There are Captain Ukraine PhotoShop jobs that put his head on Chris Evans’s body. Countless photos contrasting him, in a flak jacket and bulletproof vest, with Ted Cruz rolling his suitcase through the airport or Trump in his golfing outfit. Even Trump himself, apparently a Putin ride-or-die, is praising Zelensky now, leading one observer to note that “now the president of Ukraine is the more manly man… the fixation switches.”

An interesting subset of this instant myth recasts Zelensky as gangsta: The “We’re still here” video became even more popular with the added instrumental from “Shook Ones” by Mobb Deep bumping in the background. Portraits of him with an added “explicit lyrics” sticker proliferate. On Saturday, Jeremy Renner trended on Twitter for the sole reason that people decided he looked enough like the man to play him in the inevitable movie. (I don’t see it).

This, of course, is just how we happen to deal with the trauma of the unimaginable. Fangirling over Zelensky as an Avenger is the same sanity-preserving dissociation tactic that has, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, made sex gods from Fauci and (sorry to remind you) Cuomo. We’re simple creatures, and that’s where our mind goes.

But there is a morbid edge to it, too. This is the first time in my life that I am writing about a country’s president hoping he will not be murdered by the time I’m done. The current bout of Zelensky worship is different from our normal fawning over a politician, because this time we want it to work as a protective spell, too. We are making a pop idol out of a man who may be sacrificing his life as we speak, if not live on air, then something very close to it. We’re throwing up jokey tributes as insulation against a scarier truth: Zelensky is not a superhero, not a meme, not a vessel for our revenge fantasies against Putin or Trump. He is a human who rose to the occasion. All we can really do is look at him and hope that, if we are called to such unimaginable duty, we have it in us to do the same.

MICHAEL IDOV (@michaelidov on Twitter) is a director and screenwriter living in Los Angeles and a former editor-in-chief of GQ Russia.