Natalya Gumenyuk (The Guardian, 30 April 2026) writes about Americans:
“We [Ukrainians] envied other countries their strong public education, affordable health care, reliable infrastructure, decent pensions and basic dignity for vulnerable people. It was striking to see that in the US, the absence of a caring state wasn’t seen as a failure. In fact, the very ideas of collective welfare and responsibility were largely demonized. Health care was a particular flashpoint. In 2008, one man I spoke to in Ohio called free health care dangerous, even heretical. ‘This is America,’ he said. ‘You work for what you get.’”
The problem is that this logic is not consistent. If you are against the idea of collective welfare, if you are against state interference, then you must also be against the army. You must be against American military bases and American wars. Defend yourself: buy a gun and defend yourself. You can make an A-bomb at home—no question. But make it without government help.
The same applies to the war on narcotrafficking. Your son buys narcotics? It is his choice. If your son has the right to buy guns, he must have the right to buy narcotics. Anyway, don’t say that selling narcotics is a crime if you say that selling arms is not a crime.
I read a lot of the American press and watch American movies. I have never met an American worker, broker, capitalist, or movie hero who says that he works at a factory that produces guns or A-bombs.
American billionaires are against state help for poor and vulnerable people, but they are in favor of state help for billionaires.
Gumenyuk ends her column with the statement:
“After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a society long sceptical of government has had to build one in real time. The war revealed a hard truth: only a functioning state can survive such a massive assault. Only a professional military can repel one of the world’s most powerful armies. Only a coordinated health system can care for the wounded under constant shelling.”
Well, that means that all rebukes to Americans are null and void. Americans are for socialism—for soldiers—and Ukrainians are too. Socialism for soldiers and generals; a market economy for those who cannot or do not want to shoot.
This is the logic of militarization. Sooner or later, it turns all citizens into soldiers. Not “you work for what you get,” but “you kill for what you get.”
Killing is work.
This logic means that you will become a copy of your enemy. You will lose your freedom not to the Russian army, but to your own army. Your family will be structured like a small army.
America is only a small part of humanity. Why is America so important? Only because of its army. Without the army, America would become what it was in the 19th century: a large country with a small culture—just like Russia, Iran, China, and many others. Actually, all countries are like this. Only the individual is the real country and the only legitimate state—insofar as one soul sees in another soul an equally legitimate state, with which it wants and is able to maintain relations. Without any weapons, of course. How is that possible—without weapons? Somehow it must be. We have to make an effort and invent it.