Kenneth Glad
Public institutions can seem distant until a national emergency makes them unavoidable. One writer’s reflection turns that contrast into a warning about democracy.
Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist who has reported on the United States for two decades, has written a reflective essay in The Guardian in which she examines how American politics now looks from a country fighting for survival.
Her view is shaped by both places: Years spent covering US elections, and life in Ukraine as Russia’s war made public institutions impossible to dismiss.
From Obama to Trump
She first reported on a US presidential race in 2008, when Barack Obama’s campaign reminded her of the democratic energy she had seen during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
What surprised her was how bitterly Americans fought over health care, education and welfare, services many Ukrainians and Europeans regard as basic duties of the state.
In Ohio, she met people hit by job losses and industrial decline. Retired worker Henry Sadinsky told her: “What’s happening here is happening across the whole country.”
On later trips, Gumenyuk saw the arguments darken. Policy debates were increasingly crowded out by false claims about Obama’s birthplace, conspiracy theories and pandemic denial.
At Trump rallies during Covid, masks became political signals rather than simple protection. One man told her: “Take off your mask!” A woman said: “Trump lets me go to church. He’s not sending me to China or making me wear something on my face.”
War makes government real
Russia’s full-scale invasion gave Ukraine a harsh lesson in what a functioning state does. Soldiers held frontlines. Hospitals treated the wounded. Trains kept running toward dangerous areas. Emergency crews repaired power systems after missile strikes.
That experience made American hostility to public institutions look more alarming from Kyiv. Ukraine depends heavily on US military support, yet parts of the American right have become more skeptical of aid and more receptive to Moscow’s language about “traditional” values.
Gumenyuk’s essay argues that democracy cannot rest only on private charity, personal choice or slogans about freedom. In Ukraine, the state is no longer an abstraction or a distant bureaucracy.
It is the system repairing damage, moving people, treating casualties and keeping daily life possible while the country is under attack.
Sources: The Guardian
