Of Scatalogical Existentialism: In Which the Author Uncovers a Dirty Secret

 I swear, sometimes the convergence of life’s disparate elements is amazing. 

    Of the many fetid Facebook slime-pits where I inexplicably continue to waste my precious time, the Midnight Oil Fan Community is possibly the least offensive. If the gallery of near-total strangers modeling their band shirts and hosting gatherings I will never be able to attend are of no direct relevance to me personally, neither do they do me any particular harm. In fact, they occasionally do me well, as when I was able to show off my Midnight Oil poster and accompanying pun to great fanfare - the only place in the world I might have been able to do so (yes, I am still a fanboy at heart, worn firmly on sleeve).

    More recently, a chance posting by one of the aforementioned near-strangers (as in United-in-Oil, though naught else) allowed me to solve a childhood mystery. 

       The post in question was simply the image of the band’s 1990 single “Forgotten Years”, which is not only a great song, but also the song they closed with on their very final show in Toronto, making it the very last song I will ever hear them play live. So, associations are positive, if bittersweet. 

    What struck me about the most about the post though, was the image on the cover, which I had not seen before. It was not the standard picture of the band, or accompanying vista of the Australian landscape the band tends to prefer, but a cartoon of a jet plane coming apart mid-air. The words “Who Cares” (or “Who Care” technically, as the final “s” cut off by missing tailfin) were written in bright pink across the fuselage. They were so prominent, one might have thought that was the name of the single. It was a cute, eye-catching image, playful while somehow ominous, and in no way frivolous, that well suited the raucous tone of the song and the tempered-by-but-not-trampled-by-realism idealism of the band. 

    Thing is, I’d seen that somewhere before. Not the whole picture; just the pilot. The pointy nosed, wide-eyed cartoon character. I knew that character, and that style. Where? A rusty cob webbed door of memory slowly creaked open. 
 

    In the early 80s, my uncle kept a strange cartoon book in his cottage. On the cover was a headless naked body chasing three flying heads with a butterfly net. The comics inside were just plain rude. I vividly remember one cartoon of a chef taking a dump in one of his soup pots, as posh diners cluelessly carried on in the next room. Another was of a urinating man inadvertently pissing in his own face when he tried to watch a butterfly. Yet another had a man using a periscope to examine his own bum (with evident disappointment). You get the idea. They were crass and scatological, the kind of drawings that would certainly have been confiscated at school and got you sent to the principal’s office. The appeal to a five-year old could well-be imagined. To find every dirty schoolyard joke given form, drawn, bound, and published by a grown-up was just, well, too hilarious to believe. It was big piece of subversion, carefully hidden from Mom and Dad, mischievously revealed to Grandma (who was obligingly indignant), conspiratorially shared with my uncle, and eagerly sought out every time we visited his cottage.  It regrettably vanished when he sold the cottage and got married; my pious aunt would definitely not have appreciated its humour. 

    I was too young to remember the artist, so could not look it up in any library (who probably have refused to carry it anyway). I came across nothing like it in any second-hand bookstore.  For all I knew, the book would be relegated to that overstuffed cabinet of the brain which stores the near forgotten fever dreams of childhood. 

    But now we’ve got the internet, and our Borg memory can remember anything. Here I was confronted with a crashing airplane, on a Midnight Oil ep cover of all things, and I was certain it was that guy. Who drew it? Again, the near-strangers of the Midnight Oil Fan Community helpfully informed me this was the Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig. 

    Leunig. Leunig. Of course. 
   

 Leunig was apparently quite the figure in Australian media, named a “Treasure” by the National Trust of Australia, and seller of many books. He drew for the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne’s The Age, and a pile of other publications. He was a vociferous opponent of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and, less admirably, an equally vociferous opponent of masking and vaccines during the pandemic. He got canned from the Age after comparing an anti-vaxer to the tankman of Tiananmen Square (classy, eh?). He died in December of 2024. 
 

That book in my uncle’s cottage was The Second Leunig: A Dusty Little Swag. Unlce must have picked it up on one of his travels; to my knowledge, Leunig never made terra-firma in North America. I certainly never came across him until now.

 
  Finding the artist and looking him up though only made me wonder again whether I’d hallucinated the whole thing. The samples of Leunig’s work I’d initially been able to find online (admittedly a small one) were clean, Hallmark level earnest, and infused with heavy religious overtones. Nothing at all like the vulgar etchings I remember. Granted, The Second Leunig was published in 1979; his last cartoon was published just before he died in 2024. More than enough time for an artist to evolve. Still, the gulf was jarring.  Was it the same guy? No doubt: that was absolutely the book. By what tangling path does one get from that Point A to that Point B? 

    I examined the available cartoons a little more and dug deeper into my memory. Tenuous

connections began to emerge. The “new” ones (or more recent anyway) were not as innocent as they seemed at first, especially once he got into the anti-war stuff. But they were still earnest beyond earnest, and did not seem at all in keeping with the crudities of old. Yet, there may have been more to those than met the 6-year-old eye. 

    It wasn’t just the dirty jokes that drew me to those cartoons. There was a weird ambience about them that I found enticing. They were surreal, dreamlike, and a little ominous. They did not take place in any recognizable world, but in impressionistic landscapes, often empty and dreary, where night always seemed to be falling and things only made sense within the borders of the panel. Opening the book rather felt like falling asleep, and so not unlike the hallucinatory escapades of Halloween is Grinch Night, the Magic Shadows theme, Winnie-the-Pooh’s encounter with Hephalumps and Woozles, or Dumbo’s drunken visions. There was always a little darkness creeping in around the edges – literally and figuratively. I liked to dip my toes in that darkness. Just enough to see how it felt. I still do. I like to lift the rock of the subconscious and look at the little slugs hiding underneath. 

    The characters were wide eyed, big nosed, kid-friendly creations in a seemingly permanent state of confusion or mild-disappointment. The occasional happy ones (keeping in mind I’m relying on Google images to bolster 40+ year old memories here) usually sat blissfully unaware in environments otherwise suggestive of bleak despair. 
 

    A recognizable philosophy emerges. 
 

    Context helps. Reading them now, and seeing how involved Leunig got in socio-political issues, lends the older images meanings that were not previously apparent – to me anyway.  I notice things now that I didn’t back then. Life experience will do that to you. An English degree and a teaching degree will also do that to you, not to mention showing other people how to recognize symbolism for almost a decade. 
 

    Perfect example, this one here, the only one I’m certain was in the Second Leunig I’ve been able to find: 

    I remember grumbling that this one wasn’t funny. I didn’t like the idea of being held up on a stick. I figured the grown-up behind was just trying to be edgy, and turned the page. As a kid, I didn’t get it.

    As a middle-aged man, I definitely get it. When someone points to a dark void and says “face the future!”, it can only mean one thing.  Many adults use children to ward of fear of that one thing. They see children’s lives as mere extensions of their own.  

    Whatever you think of my interpretation (and who knows what specifically Australian context I might be missing) this is not merely an edgelord scrawl: it is rife with meaning, and almost certainly polemical. Looked at that way, the previously mentioned cartoons take on a new significance. The shitting chef could be seen as contempt for the bourgeoisie (or possibly a critique of Australian’s culinary scene, I’m just speculating here). The pissing man got pissed on when he tried to look up from the ground and follow something beautiful. And the periscope? An indictment of self-examination. How often does it reveal something not worth seeing? Even a half-remembered multi-panel sequence about a man who lost his underpants was something of a Kafkaesque tale of wandering naked and alone in the desert. 

    It would seem that nothing was as it seemed. 
 

    This Betooga Advocate described Leunig's cartoons as “bordering nihilism” (and him an "old shit stoner"). I’m not sure that’s fair - about the nihilism. True nihilists don’t take principled stances against war or poverty (and say what you will about the idiocy of his mask/vax stance, in his own mind it was a matter of principle.)  I would say they’re existential.  Explorations of life, musings on the meaning of existence. Attempts to clear off bullshit (sometimes quite literally).

    I’m not so invested in Leunig to be too disappointed that he turned out to be a crank (though it is dispiriting that yet another one went down that road). Yet, his work was a piece of my childhood, and all my predilections were formed in childhood. A tendency to navel gaze? A fondness for storm-clouds, shadows, and broken windows? Whatever came later, reading existential cartoons at the age of 5, 6, and 7 did its part. 

    Come for the bums; stay for the existentialism. 

In which an Imbecilic Thought-Experiment is Laid to Rest.

            It is a thing of beauty to hear Vlad Vexler taking the piss out of Jordan Peterson. Though Peterson is so yesterday’s news – a washed-up alt-right has-been so thoroughly debunked and discredited as to have all the relevance of past-due-date mayonnaise or a physical copy of The Royal Teens’ Greatest Hits – it is a delight to hear Vexler take him down.

Vexler is possibly my favourite content creator at the moment, a political philosopher of deep insight, with a calm, almost ASMIR-like delivery (which is useful after even a second of Peterson’s slaughtered-pig voice). He starts every talk by greeting his “beautiful community”. A life-long sufferer of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), he has recently taken to presenting from his bed attached to an oxygen tank. His determination is inspiring.

            As for Peterson, he was harping on that old canard of the nazis being a left-wing project rather than a right-wing one. The idea stems from the Randian idea that any amount of state-interference (possibly even the existence of the state itself) is an intolerable intrusion on human liberty, and a slippery slope to atrocity. By this reasoning, even setting up a minor health care system is the first step to Bergen-Belsen. Heavily implied in this analysis is the assumption that deep down, this is what all leftists want.

            “Extract a random sample of nazi policies and strip them of markers of their origin, and present them to set of people with conservative or leftist beliefs and see who agreed [sic] with them more,” screeches Peterson, before blasting social scientists for not “doing their bloody job”. As if that was their bloody job.

             Which nazi policies, I wonder, would Peterson extract for this purpose? Does he really think depriving Jews of citizenship, or outlawing mixed-race marriages would go over well with leftist audiences? Or does he propose to only show them nazi policies on filling potholes?  Thing is, you can’t strip nazi policies of the “markers of their origin”, as they are inherently recognizable and indelibly reprehensible. Unless Peterson can demonstrate that self-identifying leftists approve of mass-slaughter, he hasn’t proven a thing.

            Vexler goes deeply into the cultural origins of ideology and the inevitable cross-contamination that occurs when they spring from the same cultural milieu. The idea that two ideologies are actually the same thing because they share certain traits, Vexler dismisses as ridiculous, “no less silly than arguing bruschetta is a margherita pizza because they both have basil and tomato in it.”

            My own objection is simpler. It removes intention and motivation. Never mind what the road to hell is paved with, intention matters. What is it people actually want? Extermination of the Jews, enslavement of the Untermensch, and domination of the world were the stated goals of naziism from the very beginning, not some unintended consequence of their economics. 

            Which side today is dehumanizing vast swaths of people? Calling for mass incarceration and eliminating habaeus corpus? Worshipping their Leader? Peterson ought to know.

In which the Canadian Voting Public Set a Record Straight

 

So how do you blow a twenty-point lead and lose your own seat? Inquiring minds wish to know.

Seriously, just a couple of months ago, everyone took it for granted that in the next Canadian election, Pierre Poilievre would win by a landslide, and the Liberal Party would be all but wiped out.

Obviously, he did not, and they were not. In fact, he lost, and they took his riding.

Clearly, Trudeau Derangement Syndrome is not the selling point he thought it was. Least of all when Trudeau was no longer on the scene. But still, he kept whipping that dead horse, kept singing that song and playing that game, even after the music and the game had changed.

Yeah, yeah, Canada’s worse off now than the Killing Fields of Cambodia, we’re all digging up white grubs for dinner, and Mark Carney is just Goebbels to Trudeau’s Hitler. Bitch bitch, whine, moan. You know, if you’re running for office, feel free to say something nice about the country you hope to lead.

Now maybe it’s all true, and maybe it’s not, but enough folks weren’t buying it that the Conservatives couldn’t crack it. (I for one got sick of being lectured about the price of housing by people living in 905 McMansions).  Thing is, after November, Trump got into power, and nobody gave a shit about Trudeau anymore. 

Trump came to power and threatened the existence of this country itself – and Poilievre wanted us to be afraid of the Liberals?
 

Doug Ford put on his Captain Canada cape, went on American TV and declared “Canada’s Not For Sale!”, a rallying cry you could fit on a hat. (I suppose “Axe the Tax” was a great slogan to – so great, that Carney went and did it himself.) Ford knew what was really on people’s minds, and left them no doubt where he stood on the matter. He did not exhort us to tremble at the ghost of Kathleen Wynne.  
 

He won his election.
 

It was a super easy strategy which Poilievre bizarrely refused to emulate (and Ford himself wondered at). Nope, Trudeau was his whipping boy, and he was sticking with it. On the Wednesday before the election I got a text from Conservative HQ, asking if I’d help them “stop the Liberals” (how flattering to be found that potentially useful). Even at that late date, the Liberals were the boogey man they were chasing. As if the mere mention of the word would scare folks into their arms. Not a word about Trump. He just wasn’t something the Conservatives came across as worried about.  If even a smidgeon of their anti-Liberal venom had been tossed at the Tangerine Tyrant, they’d have had a government now.

So why not? I have my suspicions, and so did voters. In the minds of many it amounted to praising with faint damnation. Rightly or wrongly, Poilievre was seen as Trump’s guy in Ottawa (the terribly Trumpian promise to bypass the Charter of the Rights and Freedoms didn’t help).

Not even offering to overturn the single-use plastics ban could overcome that.

Not Another Useful Idiots Group!

 As I put the finishing touches on this post, Zelensky is leaving the White House early, as talks between him and Trump appear to break down completely. The implications of this make me want to vomit. The things that inspired this post feel petty indeed. But the post is written, so here it is. 

At this late juncture, when Trump himself is basically offering to split Ukraine down the middle, Molotov-Ribbentrop style, I find it easy to forget that groups like “Films For Action” still have anything to say about it. 

I shouldn’t, because groups like this have something to say (usually the same thing) on everything. But my dumb, naïve, faith in humanity clearly knows no bounds, and I continuously underestimate people’s stubborn attachment to worthless bromides. 

Films for Action (said “Action” presumably referring to social media postings) is the latest group I’ve encountered that presumes to offer an opinion (I won’t dignify as “proposal”) on issues it knows less than nothing about. The pattern is the same: high- school level buzzwords and slogans offered up in place of any actual knowledge of history or geopolitics, from a safe, enclosed space in the west, free of input from any Ukrainian, East European, or indeed anyone in a position to know anything about it. The aggressor is praised with faint damnation, the proposed solutions utterly unworkable, the assumed causes utterly nonsensical. 

At this late junction, these groups seem incredibly inconsequential – there’s less than a candle’s chance in the Mariannes Trench that any of this stuff will be taken into account by any of the parties involved – but I know well meaning people who take these cliches seriously (and I want to test my new keyboard), so I will address some of their points:  

(Here's the link again) 

1) NATO encroachment? Encroachment on what? Countries that want to protect themselves from Russia. Eastern Europe is not Russia's property, nor its "sphere of influence". It is not entitled to any say in which treaties those countries choose to enter. It is certainly not entitled to invading countries at whim, which it has a history of doing, and which only NATO membership has been able to prevent. 

2) Reject the militarization of Ukraine - Only Ukraine's decision to make. It's not ours to reject.

Even if we accept the implied fantasy that Ukraine was once some demilitarized pacifist utopia, what possibly could have militarized it? Could it have anything at all to do with Russia's military invasion of it? 

Rest assured, Russia will not similarly demilitarize, even if Ukraine chooses to. 

3) End U.S. and NATO weapons shipments. Presumably that would include the ant-aircraft systems which Ukraine has been using to prevent Russian missile attacks on its cities. This would leave Ukraine entirely defenseless. Russia would love this. 

4) Propose a demilitarized zone along Ukraine’s eastern border. Which side of the border? Which border? The real one or the current one? 

5) Ending sanctions that harm civilians - a Kremlin sob story. The sanctions are currently hindering Russia's ability to maintain this war - rebuilding its lost materiel, and paying its soldiers, and producing its missiles, which harm far more civilians. 

6) Guarantee security for Ukraine through diplomatic agreements - Russia has never honoured a diplomatic agreement in its existence (except perhaps the Molotov - Ribbentrop pact). Minsk I and II, and the Budapest memorandum, were previous diplomatic agreements that supposedly guaranteed Ukraine's sovereignty. All were violated with impunity. Such agreements are just pieces of paper without the strength or willingness to enforce them.

Also note that the entire project staff of this organization (with the exception of one Brit) are based in Kansas. No one from Ukraine, or any former Warsaw Pact country. No one with any experience of living next to Russia. 

Anytime anyone blames Russian behavior on “NATO encroachment”, it follows as night follows day, that said person has never met nor spoken to anyone who lived under the former Warsaw Pact. (There definitely weren’t any consulted for the production of this document).  

There’s a glorious lack of self-awareness these groups enjoy, when they cough up ideas not remarkably different from Trump’s own: freeze the lines of conflict, stop the flow of aid, and end the sanctions. Not a word about returning Ukrainian territory or kidnapped children. For all practical purposes, there’s no difference. It amounts to a mutilated, disarmed Ukraine in the face of a resurgent, unrepentant Russia. 

Wherefore all these treaties and agreements suggested by Films for Action? How, pray tell, might they be imposed or enforced? They don’t know, and probably don’t care. Such manifestos aren’t meant to be implemented, but to signify ideological commitment.  

Not long ago, many leftists embraced the "punch a nazi" craze. There was no talk of negotiated settlements then. There was some recognition there that some evils can only be dealt with one way. If only there was a similar recognition that not all evils shave their heads. 

Of Men, Martians, and Medias

 One of my favourite stories from the 20th Century has to be the reaction to Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of War of the Worlds in 1938. Basically, folks thought it was the news, and lost their shit. 

Do listen to the radio play if you ever get the chance. It does sound like a radio broadcast. It starts with an announcer from an authentic sounding station introducing an orchestra, some music, briefly interrupted by a report on some meteorites, followed by more music, then more newsflashes, until, well, the Martians are marching on New York and it's the end of civilization as we know it. It's great entertainment, and it sounds authentic.   

It was a convincing pastiche of radio news programs at the time. 

Listeners could be forgiven if they thought it was the real thing (especially in those tense, pre-WWII days). If they seemed incredulous, well, loads of people today in the internet age believe far stupider things. 

George Orwell addressed the phenomenon in 1940. More specifically, he addressed a

survey, conducted by Princeton University, of the -victims? Participants? I’d love to quote the whole thing for you in full, but suffice it to say, his words, as usual, are still crushingly relevant. 

The first interesting bit he addressed was the extent to which people on both sides of the Atlantic tended to trust what would now be called the “Mainstream” or “Legacy” media. People thought they were hearing the news, and assumed what they heard on the news had to be true. He suggests that had the story appeared on the front page of one of London’s papers, the British public would have believed it as well:

"It is known that newspapers are habitually untruthful, but it is also known that they cannot tell lies of more than a certain magnitude,”

God knows Orwell was no fan of the papers. But he kept things in perspective, and he knew there were rules to the game. For all its flaws, I’ll still take the legacy press over the post-apocalyptic swamp of meme-land, which has fostered wide-spread climate-change denial, vaccine skepticism, Russian pseudo-history, and even bloody flat-earth theory. The papers weren’t that bad. 

Even so, the listeners are not entirely let off the hook for their credulity: 

“So few of the viewers attempted any kind of check. . .It appears over two thirds of them attempted no kind of verification: as soon as they heard the end of the world was coming, they accepted it uncritically.”

It seems our lot. People don’t check. They don’t verify. They don’t investigate. They don’t stop and think “hey, wait a minute. . .” They click “like” and repost. And base their world view on that, and vote based on that. And so here we are. 

Maybe no one’s believing in Martian invasions, but they are panicking about immigrant invasions, woke hive minds, and big pharma. They’re terrified that George Soros will implant microchips in their heads, but think it cool when Elon Musk actually does it. They rage at phantasmagorical Q Anon Pizzagate child-sex rings which don’t exist, while ignoring the child victims of school shootings, who do. They will even torment the parents of Sandy Hook victims. These self proclaimed guardians of exploited children care not a whit that their messiah was buddies with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The President of the United States can make stuff up off the top of his head, and every word is taken as Gospel.    

 Our civilization has no business lecturing anyone about gullibility. 

As interesting, and no less relevant to us today, were the apparent backgrounds of the believers. “The evident connection between personal unhappiness and the readiness to believe the incredible is [the survey’s] most interesting discovery.” I will quote the last bit in full:

People who have been out of work, or on the verge of bankruptcy for ten years may actually be relieved to hear of the approaching end of civilization. It is a similar frame of mind that has induced whole nations to fling themselves in the arms of a Saviour.

 Craziness in Korea. . .

President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to declare marshal law, ostensibly to take on "anti-state forces" at work in the country - which sounds a lot like a euphemism for "the opposition".

There followed surreal scenes of the military attempting to storm the National Assembly. . .and lawmakers blocking the door to keep them out. Fire extinguishers were used.

People took to the streets. Parliament tables a motion to lift martial law, passed 190-0. The Army wavered for a bit, then withdrew, probably disappointed. Mass calls for Yoon to resign. 

Blink and you miss it. 

It would appear that the Koreans rose to the occasion and successfully defended their democracy. It took immediate, decisive action, and more than a little courage. Had there been any lolly-gagging, the National Assmebly would have been cleared out, the motion not passed, and Korean democracy would presumably have been effectively over. 

I mean, I don't know how it works in Korean politics, but the fact this was a unilateral move by President Yoon, without any sort of process, and that it would have entailed the cessation of political activity and independent media, and that South Korea has a long and quite recent history of authoritarian take-over, AND that Yoon has a history of authoritarian tendencies, make it look like the end of Korean democracy was the end goal. 

And they were stopped. 

It was a narrow escape, and I can't help wondering how some certain other societies would compare in a similar situation. Alas, I have no faith in our own citizenry to act so decisively or bravely. 

In fact, I am quite certain a large number of the electorate would side with the army. 

Good for Korea. Shame on the rest of us. 
 

 So. . .Lame Duck President Biden has finally decided to allow the Ukrainians to strike back at their Russian and North Korean invaders with US supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS)  - in the Kursk region. Other regions of Russia remain sacrosanct, so it can continue to launch glide bombs at Ukrainian day-care centres with complete impunity. 

This has outraged the usual suspects. The Kremlin is Krying foul, as it always does when its victims fight back.  Elon Muskovite, Marjorie Traitor Green, and the rest of Putin's puppets in America are all wetting their beds, as they always do when their masters are inconvenienced. And the lily-livered left are bitching about the military industrial complex, as they always do when their prayer beads fail to stop dictators. All claim this (as opposed to Russia's invasion in the first place) will lead to World War Three. All are being disingenuous: Russia, because disingenuousness in bred into it's DNA, the Right because they want Russia to win, and the Left because they always hate to see Western weapons used, even when they intercept glide bombs headed for maternity wards. Even ostensibly sympathetic commentators, such as Owen Jones and Cenk Uygur, don't want to see Ukraine defend itself too vigorously. 

Thing is, Russia's been threatening WWIII from the very beginning. It has threatened to unleash the nukes every time so much as a bottle of foreign made athlete's foot powder has landed in Ukraine, and has opted not to do so Every Single time, possibly because it actually doesn't want to be turned into soup.

Nor is it in any position to send in its tanks or jets, as all of them are needed in Ukraine at the moment. Fact is, Russian conventional forces wouldn't last a minute against NATO, and Moscow knows it. Yet, NATO continuously falls for its bluffs, even after unwittingly calling them.  And considering the Ukrainians are already in it up the neck, the threat of "escalation" or "retaliation" seems laughable indeed.  

I say "hurrah!" ATACM strikes might hurt the invaders a bit more. They might enable Ukraine to keep some thimble-full of Russian land to bargain with when Trump forces them to surrender. They might intercept a handful of glide-bombs. Will they change the course of the war? This utterly amateur arm-chair observer thinks not.   

At this stage in the game, it all strikes me as a bit like lending someone a fire-extinguisher after their house has burnt down. The time when such weapons could have made a major impact is long past. Some months ago for instance, Ukraine came this close to winning a major victory south of the Seym river, but just couldn't pull it off. The Russians reinforced and resupplied too quickly. ATACMS, disrupting Russian logistics, might have made a difference. They might not have, but we'll never know now: the moment has passed. 

A great many moments have passed. The West has a gift for providing too little too late. ATACMS didn't even arrive in Ukraine until long after Russia had consolidated its positions. HIMARS, Abrams tanks, and F-16 jets all arrived only after much hand-wringing and delay, during which time, more and more of Ukraine was chewed off by the bear. 

Analogies abound. 

Give 'em the helmet after the head injury.

Give 'em the coat after the hypothermia. 

Plug up the boat after it sinks. 

Lock the door after the thief gets in. 

There comes a point when late becomes so late, it may as well be never.  We're fast approaching that point now. The longer it takes for Western weapons to arrive, the fewer Ukrainians will there will be to use them, and the less there will be of Ukraine to protect. 

It didn't have to be this way.