As we are a caught up in the churning currents of the Endless Present, it is healthy to grab ahold of the shore from time to time, to catch our breath and take stock of everything this force has left in its wake. If 2022 taught us anything, it’s that the house we’re all collectively in is on fire, and anyone grabbing a bucket of water or a fire extinguisher is castigated as crazy or even evil for even pointing out the flames.

Some of the so-called “truths” we’ve been told in recent years were revealed to be lies, but no single person could possibly observe let alone retain the deluge of information and events that we’ve been able to squeeze into a single year.

We live in an age where the longstanding definitions of concepts like “recession” and “inflation” have proven to be as malleable as “herd immunity” and “vaccinations” were in 2020 and 2021. Our government has decided to focus on its global ambitions, neglecting the concerns of its constituency, and lying about everything from job numbers to the state of the border and the economy to gaslight us into thinking that everything is fine.

There is one pernicious lie perpetuated in 2022 that continues to linger. That lie is that you can either support our “financial obligation” to Ukraine, or you can support the evil tyrant Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s invasion is certainly the defining narrative of 2022. The reality is the pain from the pandemic has been prolonged all in the name of geopolitical maneuvering, and we are told not to dare to question the decision.

Due to the US National Security State’s long-term goal of regime change in Russia, the stage for the invasion of Ukraine had been set long before Putin began massing troops and tanks at the border. Basically, the NATO states have been flashing a revolver at the poker table for years now, knowing full well how Putin was likely to react to it. Putin, being the biggest gangster in a nation of gangsters with his back against the wall, didn’t disappoint.

Putin absolutely deserves every label he’s saddled with, considering how authoritarian and cruel he can be to his domestic opposition. The longstanding outcry and outrage against Putin and his regime are expressed rather freely by our leadership and media class, a stark contrast to the complete absence of it in regard to the excesses of another authoritarian strongman with ambitions toward territorial expansion named Xi Jinping.

The subsequent supply chain disruptions and the butterfly effect of human damage ultimately are just the sacrifices we all must make. What’s been truly amazing is watching the Neo-Liberal Establishment and the Progressive Left learn to love the indiscriminate funding of the Forever War in the name of regime change. This is the same party that’s always harping that there’s always enough money for Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin but not for any of the entries on their welfare state wish list. Yet there they were joining their hated GOP enemies in turning the faucet on full blast.

Their eagerness is only eclipsed by those Republican Warhawks who have been drooling over the prospect of war with Russia since they were in diapers during the Cold War. When you take into account the sheer volume of money we’ve dumped on the problem you’d think we had finally heeded General George Patton’s advice at the end of World War II and finally had tanks and boots on the ground marching on Moscow.

But that’s not the case, is it? It’s much easier to gin up sympathy for a conflict when Americans don’t have to worry about a loved one dying in it. Instead, the American people have been targeted by incessant propaganda and cheerleading to motivate them to add pixelated flags to their Twitter handles and shout “Slava Ukraine” on command, accepting their financial struggles as a patriotic cross to bear.

The infuriating thing is how long this conflict has been allowed to continue, with multiple attempts to negotiate a peaceful end being scuttled by our nation’s diplomats, with the situation further exacerbated by still unknown actors bombing Russian natural gas pipelines back in September.

Ukrainian President Zelensky was not originally a politician. He was an actor and entertainer. Heck, he even played a character in a series that was elected President of Ukraine on the strength of a viral rant against government corruption in a country widely labeled as “the most corrupt in Europe.”

Never mind that Zelensky was implicated in the 2021 Pandora Papers, that revealed he had been operating a number of off-shore companies with the head of the Ukrainian Security Service to dodge taxes and hold expensive London property for him. That’s who our government has been handing billions upon billions of dollars to, and who every celebrity, politician, and pundit has been slobbering on for the last year.

The man clearly knows how to work an audience and whatever PR team he has packaging his promos and picking out his olive drab outfits have proven to be masters at wagging-the-dog of D.C. That $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill, riddled with obvious pork and handouts to the many vassals and states of the Globalist movement, was dragged over the finish line by Dick Cheney’s daughter and other lame duck Republicans all too glad to commit our nation to our holy “obligation.”

Our leaders can pat themselves on the back all they want for their indiscriminate funding of this conflict in the vain hope that it will bankrupt and ruin Putin’s Russia to such an extent that he is deposed and his regime toppled, but all that they’ve accomplished with our national wealth is a bloody stalemate we aren’t likely to see end anytime soon. In the end, they may only succeed in bankrupting us instead, and surely, they will blame Putin for their giddy and thoughtless handling of the purse strings.

The question that is avoided by Zelensky’s cheerleaders is what “we the people” get out of providing boatloads of cash that has not and will never be accounted for, so the Ukrainian President and his wife can go on shopping sprees in Paris while their nation is a war zone?

Typically, a “Sugar Daddy” gets something sweet out of the deal, but our leaders are instead shoving a spoon of Castor oil in our mouths and telling us to be grateful. But like all odious things, eventually they get spit out, unless one grows too accustomed to the taste.

Good riddance 2022. You will not be missed, but your miseries will live on long after you are gone.