From Prague with Love
The war in Ukraine is about to enter its fourth month and broken promises of diplomacy and of consequences rule the day. Information in this new world is hard to parse and with an overflow of content and incoherence, its hard to know how to think about this important issue with clarity.
The geopolitical climate that has led us to this place is complex. American militarism and strategy are always a common denominator, as is the forever temptation of war for those who would stand to profit from it. Another commonality is extremism in viewpoint, few ever taking the time to consider alternatives other than what they have doggedly tethered themselves to. Sadly, in wars like the one raging in Ukraine, there is a stark asymmetry between the people stoking the fires of conflict and those responsible for burdening its impacts on the ground.
As I take one last draw on a French 75 at some nebulous but charming airport restaurant, I deliberately attempt to avoid the flat screen televisions in the background, but my attempts fail. As it would turn out, no Ukraine news on this TV, instead it is showcasing a banal sporting event I am incapable of caring about.
The easily frightened among you might question the nature of my travels to the far-off but enchanting city of Prague just last month. A low-key conference on effective altruism was my primary destination on paper.
Effective altruism is a growing philosophical movement, and a sort of Peter Singer spin off organization. There’s lots to unpack about the movement but in essence it aims to convince anyone who will listen about the analytics and evidence in favor of how to do the most good in the world. Given both the chronic and acute risks of nuclear escalation, and the existential risk that amounts to for us all, Prague was perhaps a deliberately ironic place to hold the conference but who am I to complain about the ironic.
As a cab screeches to the terminal doors, I’m next in line outside Vaclav Havel International Airport. The man behind the wheel looks like an actor with the hair and the jawline that would-be actors salivate over. He points to me almost manically as if to say, “you’re next”. In one seamless movement he hops out of the car, pops the trunk, and seemingly having skipped steps in between, we’re off into the busy afternoon traffic of the Czech Republic’s iconic capital city.
I utter the name Hotel U Jezulatka but cannot pull up the address because my phone is not only choosing this moment to die but also now refuses to connect to the internet. I show him the name of the hotel and he grabs the phone from my hands without asking.
The physical barriers that COVID attempted to erect have all but dissolved in this part of Europe and what remains are these small moments of unpredictable human interaction that quickly become intoxicating and amusing to me.
As we drive, he asks me how long I had to wait for a car at the airport and summarizes the service shortages COVID has ushered in. He tells me that his company had 300 cars running at any given day before the pandemic but now has only half that number. By the way he lunges around in the densely packed and extremely small streetways, I question how he has one car let alone 150, and pray I arrive alive.
Prague, as I was told by one friend, is a magical city. Built on the backs of people all too familiar with history, with war, and with soviet occupation, the culture is a blend of the old and the new, and the standstill in between that resists extradition.
In addition to the magical, there are many oddities to behold. The plethora of candy stores throughout the city is truly a remarkable feat. Maybe this is standard issue touristy stuff, surprising only to a man just beginning to build his travel muscles, but the religion of candy in this special place has many faithful adherents. Another theme was Michael Jackson, and the countless shops that loudly and boisterously played Billie Jean, and Beat It, and Smooth Criminal at exactly the right times.
The many quirky memorabilia and souvenir shops are well worth perusing, too. After some humming and hawing, I pulled the trigger on a small paperweight statue I had been eying in a window shop for days. St Michael, about to stick a sword into the devil, an ode to the Archangel referenced in the Old Testament, was mine for a generous 1200 Czech Koruna.
In one of his many epic travel seminars, the late Anthony Bourdain visited Prague to investigate the cuisine and the culture. As Bourdain correctly uncovered during his travels, the region was hit hard under soviet communist occupation.
Trouncing of expression and art, a hallmark of the great communist evil, involves cuisine, and this rings true in Czechia as the native cuisine is matched and sometimes superseded by the imports. In my experience, the staple and appreciable meat and potatoes and beer of Prague stood out but so too did more than a few great Italian restaurants I visited with the best of company.
On a night near the end of the trip, as I left Hotel U Jezulatka, I summited the steps leading to the historic Charles Bridge, a 665-year-old landmark which appears in the opening of Brian De Palma’s 1996 epic Mission: Impossible. De Palma highlighted several other destinations I visited, most notably the National Museum which overlooks Wenceslas Square.
As I stumbled onto the bridge, I was met with a crowd that was more vigorous and maintained than the nights previous. The mammoth mass of people was the kind of thing that COVID had completely wiped from my memory. The banality of masks and of social distancing had been completely engulfed by energy and by zest and in this case by catholic hymns and religious chants. Just like in the cab at the airport, space was not respected.
I found out as I walked among the faithful that I was participating in a procession known as Navalis 2022, a celebration of St. John’s of Nepomuk, patron saint of the Czechs, murdered during a conflict in the 14th century. Incidentally, to my knowledge, the new Archbishop of Prague had been crowned just a few days earlier by the Pope as well. Even as a bad and sinful catholic, now free from my unserious religious upbringing, it was a spectacle of spirituality that is as intoxicating as Prague’s famous Pilsner to so many.
During my week in what we might call the zone of interest, the word Ukraine was seldom uttered. I didn’t go looking for it either and perhaps that was a missed opportunity and mistake. Even though I’d quickly forgotten I was in a country contiguous with Poland, which is contiguous with Ukraine, elements of support were apparent - they just took on a show instead of tell characteristic and feel.
As I made my way across the bridge to meet my date for the night, and for of all the best parts of the trip, the picture of the procession was a memorable one. Hundreds of people were packed into the square in front of St. Francis Of Assisi Church on the opposite end of the bridge. Across the street, the Church of St. Salvator sat in the background with a bright yellow and blue sign screaming: “Hands off Ukraine, Putin!” to anyone who looked up at it.
Putin is many things, but he is most dangerous now due to his unpredictability and desperation. Where western leaders are sometimes rational when the chips are down, unpredictability of the kind Putin peddles is a gnawing damper on the game of building a viable global civilization.
In line with other forms of behavioral malignancy, extremist religious ideology and financial greed chief among them, the thirst for power in its own right is the focus of Putin’s ire now. He’s old, he’s broken, and he knows he has seen many more sunsets than he is going to see. This combination of realities, in addition to a highly romanticized nostalgia for the way things were under the USSR, is a toxic mixture when it comes to peace in the region.
In contrast to Putin’s unpredictability, Czechia’s beautiful capital city delivers consistently and shows why there is serious merit in escaping and resisting oppressive soviet rule in all its forms. As we collectively escape Covidville, the hope moving forward is that those in Ukraine reach some remediation to their current plight because if not for the luck of location, perhaps Kyiv would be Prague.
It is hard to know from a policy perspective how a resolution should happen, and to what degree the west needs to insert itself to ensure an optimal outcome. Despite my own inability to tether to an opinion on the geopolitics at this point, the symbolism of St Michael killing the devil is one that presents itself again and again in my mind. Soviet oppression, in both its past and more clandestine and restrained but deadly present form, is, in actuality, a devil out in the open, and one that ought to meet the sword.