The Compromise Russia and Ukraine Have to Make

Last week, I heard of a 28-point proposal that the Trump administration presented to Ukraine and Russia to end their brutal war. I decided to take a look at it. Here's a link to it if you want to read it too. It's got a lot of interesting things in it. The way it has 28 points is interesting by itself, because this is exactly twice the points of Woodrow Wilson's "14 Points" you may have heard about in history class, which was the president's plan for ending World War I. That plan was followed to some extent, though it was only a part of ending that war. Does it therefore take twice as many points to end the Russo-Ukrainian War as World War I? Anyway, a lot of the 28-point proposal looks quite reasonable to me. I'd like to focus on two points in particular. I'm predicting some will disagree with my opinion of the proposal and the points I'm about to mention, but that's okay - we can talk about it if you'd like.

21. Territories:

a. Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk to be recognized De-Facto as Russian, including by the United States.

b. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be frozen at the contact line, which would mean a De-Facto recognition at the contact line.

c. Russia to give up other agreed upon territories they control outside of the five regions

d. Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk region that they currently control, and this withdrawal area will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone, internationally recognized as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarized zone.

Here we have the section talking about territorial changes. I'm not sure what a "de facto" recognition would mean, as opposed to full recognition. Nonetheless, ever since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it's been clear to me that Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk have been culturally Russian for a long time. Crimea was only given to Ukraine in 1954 (back then, it was a transfer from one Soviet republic to another). Ukrainians have never been the majority there, while (at least in the past few decades) Russians have. The method of annexation was certainly questionable, but Crimea does fit in more with Russia than Ukraine apart from geography. Similarly, Donetsk and Luhansk have had Russian-speaking majorities for decades, and those two oblasts were where pro-Russian separatists ignited the very next chapter of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Percent in each oblast speaking Russian, as of a 2001 census. Sevastopol, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk are the ones where Russian is the majority. Image by Alex Tora.

I slightly disagree with the next provision freezing the front line in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, but there is a substantial Russian population in Zaporizhzhia oblast, and only some would be given to Russia anyway. It also provides a land connection between Donetsk and Crimea for the Russian part of Ukraine. Ukraine would still have plenty of Black Sea coast, including the major port of Odesa. There are also points protecting both Russian and Ukrainian commerce on the Black Sea in the peace proposal.

As for the other two provisions from point 21, they both sound reasonable. Russian troops should withdraw from Ukrainian-majority areas that they are in now. The part about a DMZ in the Donetsk oblast is interesting, but I'm not sure what the reason behind it is, as in I'm not sure why that's better than either Ukraine keeping what it has there or Russia taking all of that oblast (which would be "de facto" recognized anyway).

Besides the argument from redrawing borders to correspond more with ethnic boundaries, there is also an argument to be made from a different country's history. During World War II, Finland was fighting a war to keep its independence from Russia. Between the World Wars, the Soviet Union was busy trying to get everything Russia had before World War I back into Russian (or rather Soviet) control. The Soviets succeeded in many areas, but failed in Poland (the first time, that is, in 1920). Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were also left, as was Finland. The Soviet Union got its way with Poland, the Baltic countries, and Moldova over the course of the war. As for Finland, there were two different Soviet invasions: the Winter War and the Continuation War. Finland, like Ukraine today, was technically on its own. As in Ukraine, the invasions only got so far before becoming stalemates, and yet another comparison is that Finland, like Ukraine, later launched a counter-invasion. The result in the end was that Finland lost somewhat small portions of its land to the Soviet Union, while most of Finland kept its independence. Interestingly, Finland stayed neutral in the Cold War afterward, joining neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact.

Finland had to give up some land in World War II but still won the fight to keep its independence. Does a similar result await Ukraine?

Moving on:

7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to pass in its bylaws not to accept Ukraine at any point in the future.

While this might be a hard-to-swallow pill for Ukraine, there is a geopolitical comparison to be made for this too, not just in Finland. Most people know about how Germany was divided into four occupation zones and then two (West and East Germany) after World War II. Fewer people know that the same initially happened with Austria. Vienna, like Berlin, was divided into four zones too. However, unlike Germany, Austria managed to reunite only a few years into the Cold War under the condition that Austria would join neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. To this day, Austrian law prohibits Austria from joining any military alliance. Therefore, throughout the Cold War, Austria was a neutral country between NATO and Warsaw Pact members. Similarly, Ukraine could become a neutral country between NATO members and Russia today. Did I just imply that we're in a new Cold War? Yes, but that's a topic for a different blog post.

With all that said, I think the 28-point peace proposal is the most reasonable I've seen so far for ending the Russo-Ukrainian War. I wouldn't have a much better proposal myself. Therefore, I hope this proposal works, and I hope you can see why it would be a good idea.

American Coinage vs. Inflation

Last week, the U.S. Mint minted its last pennies for circulation. In my opinion, this was long overdue, but I'm glad the Mint is at long last taking action to get rid of practically useless coinage. I remember having conversations with one of my coworkers last year who agrees with me that the penny and even the nickel should no longer be produced. In my opinion, the lowest denomination of coins should be dimes.

This isn't the first time a denomination of coin has been made obsolete. Back in the day - and I mean WAY back - there were half cents. They were some of the first coins the U.S. Mint ever produced, and they stopped getting minted in 1857. The funny thing about half cents is that not only are they valuable today collecting-wise, but they were also more valuable back then than the penny, nickel, or even dime today. Using an inflation calculator, a half cent back then would be worth about 16 cents today! In terms of composition and size, the half cent was made of pure copper and just a little smaller than a quarter. Since 1965, quarters have been made of copper too with a nickel plating. Since 1982, pennies have been made of copper-plated zinc rather than almost pure copper, and even with that change, the metal of a penny is now worth three times as much as the penny itself. The half cent isn't the only obsolete denomination of coin. There used to be two- and three-cent coins, as well, which were somewhat impractical, and twenty-cent coins, which never really caught on because there were quarters.

The half cent, ironically almost as valuable as a quarter today.

Think about it: when was the last time you were able to pay for anything for less than a nickel, or a quarter for that matter? The least expensive thing I can think of ever buying would be a handful of small candies from a dispenser for a quarter. I've never paid for anything cheaper. To pay for anything with pennies anymore, you need a lot of them. "Five-and-ten" stores are now dollar stores, and even dollar stores have lots of things you have to use more than one dollar for. I'd say that pennies and nickels should have stopped being minted before the end of the 20th century, since they could no longer pay for anything by using only one of them.

Although I mentioned the quarter is the lowest denomination coin I've used to pay for anything, I say the dime should be the lowest denomination minted because it would be more convenient numerically. For example, if something is worth $1.61, we can round it to $1.6 rather than rounding it up or down to the nearest quarter ($1.5, 1.75, 1 1/2, or 1 3/4). That would make prices have no more than one digit after the decimal point. It would also make the sizes of coins match up with the value: dime, quarter, and half dollar. Dollar coins, on the other hand, are currently between quarters and half dollars in size, though they and half dollars aren't used much anyway. Then again, if we bring back Eisenhower dollars, the size and value match up very well.

Given the long history of inflation that has happened since the penny and half cent were introduced, I think we've been overdue to stop minting pennies for a long time, and I say the nickel should be next. Lincoln and Jefferson are still honored on $5 and $2 bills. Perhaps I'll see the day when prices have only one digit after a decimal point!

A Whole Month Gone...

The shutdown still sucks.

We're now over a month into the federal government shutdown that started on October 1st, which means the whole month of October was taken up by the shutdown. I still got to work (though many of my coworkers did not), though it was often tricky to work on projects that would take up a whole workday, so I often did half-days. Either way, I miss my regular line of work, and I didn't think the shutdown would last THIS long. Has Congress gone insane?

The votes on the CR have been almost the exact same time after time, the only differences being some absent senators at times. In a previous post, I wondered if Democrats would vote for the CR just in time before the Trump administration would lay off federal workers. Well, the layoffs have already happened - weeks ago! Now, no one seems to have a good guess as to what will finally make the Senate agree on a clean CR. Would it be the first missed paycheck? Nope. Would it be right after the "No Kings" rallies? Nope. But certainly, senators would care enough to pass a CR before November 1st, when SNAP benefits would run out! Still, nope!

The day before the shutdown started, a visitor I talked to predicted the shutdown would be even longer than the last one (which was the longest). I hope he's wrong, but he could be right. Either way, this is certainly an uncertain time for the federal workforce and many others. Who knows when the shutdown will finally end, but since it's anyone's guess, I at least hope that it will end sometime this week so that we can have a bit of normalcy again, and I really hope that this isn't followed by another shutdown on November 21st, when the "new" CR would expire.

Columbus Day and Alternative Holidays

At this time of year in this country, and especially during the 21st century, there always seems to be a debate over what and who we should celebrate. Is it Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day? What are we celebrating if it is Columbus Day? This debate can be demonstrated by how, as of 2025, there's a variety of names for the day or varying degrees by which it is celebrated. In my experience living in Minnesota and both Dakotas, each has its different customs. Growing up in Minnesota, it was Columbus Day, but now it's Indigenous Peoples Day, and the Columbus statue near the Minnesota State Capitol was removed. In North Dakota, Columbus Day is still observed as such. In South Dakota, it's been Native American Day since 1990.

My photo from 2012 of the Columbus statue which used to stand near the Minnesota State Capitol before vandals tore it down in 2020.

Before I get into the debate itself, it's interesting to see how each centennial of the landing of Columbus in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 - generally considered the "Discovery of the Americas" or at least the beginning of a permanent link between America and Europe - has been marked. The author of the book Columbus and the Crisis of the West does the same. Beginning with 1592, it seems that there was little celebration. Columbus was controversial even in his lifetime, being removed as governor of the Indies by the Spanish Crown. 1692 also seems to have gone generally without notice. There may have been other factors involved in why the Spanish Empire itself didn't really celebrate Columbus Day. Perhaps, as an officially Catholic culture, Spain and its colonies weren't interested in celebrating a worldly event. Holidays were still Holy-days, and I can't think of a Spanish holiday from the 16th or 17th centuries that was not a religious one.

The United States, however, did things differently. As a new country straight out of the Enlightenment and also influenced by Protestantism, religious holidays had less weight, and secular holidays became more appealing. As the first country in America to gain independence from its mother country overseas, the United States took advantage of this fact by not only calling itself "America" but also informally "Columbia" in honor of the man and event that ultimately led to the establishment of an American country with European ideas. Therefore, by the time 1792 came around, a society in New York City celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing. In 1892, there was even more excitement amid the American industrial optimism common in American culture at the time. Columbus' landing 400 years before was seen as a triumph of human bravery, technology, and even science. It was around this time that people still believed the myth of Columbus proving that the Earth is round to the scoffing Catholic elite of Spain. Anyway, as part of that association of Columbus with industrial optimism, the World's Columbian Exposition happened in Chicago the following year, 1893. By this point and afterward, it seems that the world noticed and often followed the U.S. treatment of Columbus. Now that Spain's American colonies were all independent republics, various countries in the Americas reflected on the significance of Columbus in a positive, neutral, or negative light. Spain itself, which was slowly secularizing, started to celebrate Columbus Day as the "Day of the Race", a recognition of the spread of Spanish culture and its union with Native American cultures into what Americans often call Hispanics or Latinos. Italy, too, recognizing Columbus as a native of that country, has celebrated Columbus, but not as much as the Italian Americans, who have chosen that day to celebrate their own community and were a large factor in making Columbus Day become a federal holiday.

The commemorative Half Dollar produced in 1892/3 for the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing

By 1992, American culture was very different. Unlike in 1892, when Indian reservations and Native American rights could be taken away on a whim, the culture of the United States, having went through the civil rights movement three or so decades earlier, had equality in mind and started to question the celebration of Columbus' landing. Americans started to have more interest in the Native Americans' perspective and started to see Columbus in a less than positive way. Howard Zinn, for example, portrayed Christopher Columbus as a villain in his 1980 book, People's History of the United States. Nevertheless, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing was generally celebrated. The U.S. Mint created three different commemorative coins for the occasion. My favorite has a design split into two halves: the Santa Maria on the left (the ship of 1492) and the Space Shuttle on the right (the "ship" of 1992). Also, Pope St. John Paul II marked the occasion by visiting the Dominican Republic, one of the first countries visited by Columbus, but more so celebrated it as the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Christian evangelization of the Americas.

The reverse of the commemorative dollar coin made for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing

From 1992 onward, the debate over Columbus Day has been a major talking point in American culture wars. Some, mostly conservatives, still celebrate Columbus Day for the first voyage of Columbus. Others, mostly liberals, celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day for the people who have lived in the Americas for countless millennia. I say there are good reasons to celebrate both. I'll start with the reasons why Columbus Day is good to celebrate, and then the reasons why Indigenous Peoples' Day is good to celebrate.

Columbus Day commemorates a very significant event in world history. Although Columbus didn't actually set foot on the American mainland on October 12, 1492, he did on a later voyage, and in any case, his first voyage set of explorations that would permanently unite the Americas on one side and Europe and Africa on the other. This brought about both good and bad things. Sure, Columbus may have had a mind for exploitation, and European diseases and conquests severely damaged the native population, but it also introduced horses, metallurgy, guns, and many other things the native tribes of the interior of North America especially wanted to have. The Europeans, meanwhile, were introduced to some very good crops such as cacao, tomatoes, squash, green beans, and maize (which became so widely grown that an old word for grain, "corn", began to refer to just maize). There is much debate over the character of Columbus himself, but I would say that Columbus Day should be celebrated for the permanent link across the ocean if not for the man who led the voyage that made that happen.

The spread of guns and horses across North America. Although Europeans brought them first, Native Americans were eager to gain the two through intertribal trade or spoils of war.

Indigenous Peoples' Day honors the history and many cultures of the people who first discovered America many millennia ago and have been there ever since. The celebration of these cultures and what they have given the world can also be celebrated as part of that holiday. It is also fitting to celebrate it on the same day others celebrate Columbus Day since this was when Native Americans were introduced to Europeans. For all we know, the first people ever to see America may have done so on an October 12th deep in prehistory.

In conclusion, I will celebrate October 12 or the second Monday in October as Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day to commemorate the exchange of cultures that happened on October 12, 1492 and onward. Since I respect both versions of the holiday, I think that whoever belittles either Native Americans or Columbus and other Europeans is being unreasonable, because a good look at the history of the Americas reveals lots of good and bad results from that fateful event - which is not surprising since any aspect of history as broad as American history is going to have a mix of good and bad events resulting from the actions of good and bad people.

My Thoughts on the Government Shutdown

Well, this sucks.

As I write this, the federal government is on its 5th day of being shut down, and there's guaranteed to be another tomorrow, and after that, who knows. This is the fourth time I've seen a federal shutdown during my lifetime, but only the first I've experienced as a federal employee. I frankly didn't think there was going to be a shutdown last week, since the CR the House of Representatives proposed was the same that got passed in March. What changed? There are a few guesses as to what changed that made the government shut down this time, and both sides of the political aisle are (unsurprisingly) pointing fingers at each other. There is one that seems reasonable but still doesn't explain some details, and it has something to do with Chuck Schumer.

I remember that during the last shutdown scare, back in March, Chuck Schumer decided on the day before the shutdown would have begun to support the CR to fund the government through September, arguing it was better to fund the government so that Trump's agenda could be restricted by federal courts, rather than have a shutdown and let Trump lay off federal workers scot-free. That inspired enough Democrats to support the CR, but not every Democrat agreed. In fact, Schumer was criticized by many Democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "AOC", who was encouraged to run for Schumer's Senate seat in 2028. It's still unknown whether she really plans to do so, but it's certainly possible. Either way, many believe that Schumer is now trying to prevent that kind of defeat by voting against the CR this time and advocating for other Democrats to do the same. Come to think of it, if I remembered that bit of drama from March, a shutdown now wouldn't have surprised me.

Here's the strange thing about the Democrats allowing this shutdown. Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said at the start of the shutdown that mass layoffs of federal workers could start as early as the weekend. If federal layoffs upset the Democrats when they happened in February, and have worried them ever since, wouldn't they want to prevent the shutdown in that case, or at least end the shutdown before the layoffs happen? So far, the threatened shutdown layoffs haven't happened, but they easily could tomorrow. Hopefully, the nay-voters will see what kind of a dangerous game they're playing and change their minds, unless they want to see federal layoffs happen so they can complain about it for political gain. If that's really the case, though, that Democrats want more layoffs to happen so they can continue griping about the Trump administration, that would be "down-to-the-marrow-of-the-bone stupid", as one senator likes to say.

I will say that regardless of whose fault it might be that the government has shut down, it's really the fault of both sides for not talking it out sooner. I hate how Congress has been waiting until the last week or even the last day before a budget deadline to come up with a deal for new funding. If Congress would meet over a month before these deadlines hit, so that they pass new funding legislation well in advance of the deadline, it would save a lot of nervousness and uncertainty for the federal agencies that receive federal funding. Laziness should have no place in the federal government.

Anti-Catholic Violence in the United States

Last Wednesday, I heard about the school shooting that killed two children and wounded 19 others at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis. It was an unusual shooting for a few reasons. First, as someone who grew up in Minneapolis, that is an unexpected place for a shooting to occur in Minneapolis. Second, this wasn't like other school shootings where a big kid at school has a gun and starts shooting. Third, it's almost unheard of for this kind of shooting to happen at a Catholic school.

The FBI determined from the shooter's manifesto and other evidence that anti-Catholic hatred played a part. This should be alarming to anyone. Despite the Constitution endorsing freedom of religion, we have here the action of an individual out to shoot people for (in part) their faith. Of course, Catholics aren't the only victims of hate based on religion. Jews have been attacked before in this country (remember the 2018 shooting in Pittsburgh?) and so have African-American Christians (1963 in Birmingham, 2015 in Charleston). There are likely other groups I'm forgetting. All three groups I just mentioned have historically been targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, but now it's just hateful people in general committing these acts of violence. Since I'm focusing on anti-Catholic violence for this post, though, I'd like to mention a few examples of violence against either Catholic property or Catholics themselves. 

In August 1834, a mob burned down an Ursuline convent in Somerville, Massachusetts. The mob had anti-Catholic feelings in general, but more specifically, there were rumors of corruption happening there. No bloodshed happened, but the dramatic act of burning the convent to the ground got history's attention. In August 1921, a priest, Fr. James Coyle, was murdered by a KKK member for performing a Catholic wedding involving a Catholic and a recent Catholic convert. More recently, in April this year, a priest was shot in Kansas. Apart from those examples, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a huge list of anti-Catholic acts in the U.S. in just the past five years.

As for the recent shooting, the motive seems to be not just anti-Catholicism but a strange mixture of various forms of hatred and mental illness. One might say the shooter was a leftist for his transgenderism and hatred of Trump. On the other hand, one might say the shooter was far-right for his hatred of Jews. Whatever can be said about the shooter, what is clear is that he had some very evil thoughts which got the better of him. In conclusion, the shooting last week should remind everyone that even though the United States government does not endorse any persecution, nor does it put anyone to death (in most states), persecution and murder still happens at the hands of individuals. While I don't think it can be said that American Catholics generally suffer persecution, incidents like what happened last week should remind us that even in a free country, it is still possible to get hurt or die because of anti-Catholic hatred - or any other hatred, for that matter.

When was the Christianization of Europe Complete?

In a different post, I talked about different ideas of what defines Europe, and whether it is a region or a continent. One idea I mentioned was what was historically called "Christendom", the contiguous area where Christianity was the dominant religion. That brought up the fact that Christendom's boundaries have changed dramatically, which brings up this question: When, if ever, was the area I defined as "Europe" completely dominated by Christianity, or which pagan group was the last to be Christianized in Europe?

There are interesting YouTube videos that show the progress of Christianity in Europe, including one by Ollie Bye. Christianity in Europe started in Greece and Rome, a fact anyone familiar with St. Paul would know. Generally, Christianity spread through various communities in the Roman Empire until the same empire that persecuted Christianity so heavily was itself converted to Christianity by the end of the 4th century. From there, Christianity spread northward by way of missionaries interacting with or confronting the Germanic tribes, who invaded the western Roman Empire, and the Slavic tribes, who invaded the northern Byzantine Empire.

By the time of the East-West Schism in 1054, there was just one large pagan region left, consisting of the Baltic countries, Finland, Karelia, and "Sapmi", the arctic homelands of the Sami people. The Northern Crusades finished off paganism in the Baltic countries during the 13th century, and Sweden just about Christianized Finland for the most part at the same time. This left only the Sami people. Southern Spain and southern Ukraine were Muslim at the time; the re-Christianization of Spain would be completed by 1500.

The Sami and Karelian peoples were interesting holdouts of paganism, indeed. When Columbus sailed the ocean blue, they were still pagan. When Luther broke from the Catholic Church, they were still pagan. That means parts of the Americas were Christianized before the Arctic region of Europe! This also means that the Sami and Karelian homelands never had a Catholic period, unlike most of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, which were Catholic countries from roughly 1000 to 1530, and Finland from roughly 1300 to 1530.

Another screenshot from Ollie Bye's video, showing how much of America was Christian before that last pagan holdout. Southern Ukraine, meanwhile, was still under Muslim control.

The Karelian and Sami peoples finally began to convert in the 17th and 18th centuries as Sweden and Russia closed in the gap between the two countries. It's still unclear to me when exactly the partition of Sami and Karelian lands was complete; perhaps the northern border between Sweden and Russia was undefined for a while. Either way, Sweden was zealously Lutheran by this time, and Russia was zealously Orthodox. Both countries were also expanding their borders and were rising great powers in the 17th century. It seems that by that century Karelians were more or less Orthodox, leaving the Sami people as the very last pagans of Europe. With Lutheranism as the official religion of Sweden, which also started to spread Lutheranism by the sword during the Thirty Years' War and afterward, Swedes began to get rid of any pagan objects they saw, such as the Sami shaman drums. The Swedish government seemed to prefer Christianization by force, though there were also Swedish missionaries who were more amiable. Finally, by the turn of the 1800s, Sami people were Lutheran and saw their pagan religion as a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, the Crimean Khanate was in trouble. The 18th century saw Russia reach the summit of its power, having defeated Sweden in the 1710s and expanding all the way to Alaska in the east. Finally, after hundreds of years of Tartar control, southern Ukraine and Crimea was annexed in 1783. Russia imposed Orthodoxy by force in this case, kicking out the Muslim Tartars and colonizing the land with Ukrainians and Russians. Therefore, with the exception of the Muslim areas in the Balkans that remain to this day, the European region was fully Christianized sometime in the 18th century.