If you want some fun, say “the Ukraine” whenever possible.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get a stock lecture about how the “the” denies Ukrainians agency or something. Then you’ll get to ask, innocently, how any of this squares with the fact that neither Russian nor Ukrainian have articles.
Then you’ll get to explain wtf an article is.
It’s insane, isn’t it? I know we like to shit on Orwell, but this kind of thinking that can get flipped as if from a switch is literally examined in 1984. These rabid libs who thought they were anti-fascist but who were really just anti-Trump spent all their time frantically searching for hidden Nazi symbols in everything from “OK” gestures to the shape of the stage at the Republican convention (or CPAC or whatever it was) to the “3” gesture made by the Jeopardy winner… and now you show them LITERAL NAZIS with full regalia and Hitler salutes and youth camps and midnight marches with fascist slogans and they see nothing.
Adam Curtis is going to have to make a documentary about this.
Adam Schiff, may he go with Bandera, has been a major force behind Russiagate, arming Ukraine, and the 6 Jan hysteria. I’m sure it’s a coincidence and that he is acting in good faith.
It’s been pretty impressive to witness. I clearly remember the insanity leading up to Iraq War 2, but at least then the US was an active combatant.
There are books to be written about this era. It likely comes down to 1) the US insistence on the “rules-based order” which is essentially a one-world government with DC as the imperial center, and 2) late-stage capitalism shoring itself up with a descent into overt fascism.
I have no idea what that is, but an article is a part of speech like a, and, or the. Most Slavic languages don’t have these, which makes the policing of language on this issue extra absurd.
(I think Bulgarian and maybe a dialect of Slovene have certain articles. But not Ukrainian or Russian.)