Vivid shots of happy people, the names of cities overlaid on the footage. Then it broke. The footage was more recent and less saturated, grim, grainy images captured by cellphones and security cameras of streets and buildings exploding into fragments. Then images of what happens when those explosions occur near people. When they occur near children.
That was what forced me to turn away. I have two kids younger than 6. The video shown during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress included numerous shots of kids my sons’ ages lying motionless on stretchers or on the ground; images of them crying as they left their homes or watching their fathers go to war.
For others, the point at which they turned away might have been seeing elderly people hurt or struggling to navigate rubble. Or perhaps simply seeing the way pacific shots of buildings or playgrounds were juxtaposed with those same places being blown apart. The point was specifically that nearly every observer watching in that room on Capitol Hill or watching from home, anywhere in the places those members of Congress represent, would find something that made them recoil.
It was certainly propaganda in service of Zelensky’s goal of getting the United States to announce that it would defend Ukraine’s skies against Russian missiles and planes. But it was propaganda that felt very familiar particularly in the explicit context of American politics. It was a very modern advertisement for a very urgent...
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