An article by Phineas Rueckert during Women’s History Month 2018 is about “12 Badass Women Who Changed the Course of Human History.”
Among them: Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, Sandra Day O’Connor and Madeleine Albright.
On the second day of the House’s public impeachment hearings on Donald J. Trump, I was spellbound by the gripping testimony of the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Louise “Masha” Yovanovitch, presented to the gathered House members and to the nation.
I would not call the unassuming, soft-spoken yet firm, confident and unfaltering Yovanovitch a “badass woman” in the strictest sense of the term (albeit Susan Glasser, below, thinks she is), nor would I say that she will change the course of history. However, I do believe she has dramatically changed the tone of the impeachment proceedings — a turning point — and may yet contribute to changing the disastrous course our nation appears to be traveling in.
The two diplomats preceding Yovanovitch, acting US ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and State Department official George Kent, were an excellent start and corroborated the testimony of previous witnesses that Trump and his cohorts used the critical military aid package Congress had approved for Ukraine to pressure the Ukraine government to dig up “political dirt” on Trump’s leading presidential election opponent.
Nine more diplomats and national security officials, including two women, are scheduled to testify next week. Hopefully they will add truth and clarity to counter the desperate machinations of this president and this administration.
Even though another shoe fell late Friday in the form of a new revelation by David Holmes, an aide to Bill Taylor, that provided what Republicans claimed was lacking (First-hand knowledge of the key events and direct linkage to Trump), Yovanovitch’s performance may turn out to be the first of the straws that eventually breaks the corrupt camel’s back.
Don’t take the high praise for and admiration of Yovanovitch and her testimony from me, please read “In Trump’s Jaded Capital, Marie Yovanovitch’s Uncynical Outrage,” by Susan B. Glasser at The New Yorker.
In her article, Glasser reminds us of Yovanovitch’s roots and background:
[Yovanovitch] spoke of her parents, who fled Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. “My first tour was Mogadishu, Somalia,” she said, signaling that she was no simpering élite, holding court at fancy dinner parties, but a badass woman of the world, who chose to serve her country in the more remote and dangerous corners of the planet.
Glasser recounts how Yovanovitch was unceremoniously fired by Trump, ironically after “hosting an event to celebrate a ‘woman of courage’ award being given by the U.S. Embassy to one of Ukraine’s fearless anti-corruption crusaders, who had been gruesomely murdered in an acid attack.”
Glasser writes how Yovanovitch offered a “decisive rebuttal” to the “state of weary cynicism [that] has taken hold regarding Trump, among his supporters and also his critics. He is what he is. What can we do about it? Even impeachment has quickly come to be seen through this lens. Members of Congress are all too likely to vote the party line. Does any of it matter?”
“Yovanovitch reminded us that all of this is, in fact, amazing and shocking and outrageous. It is not normal,” Glasser says.
Trump is not on the brink of impeachment because of some arcane dispute over differing philosophies about anti-corruption policies in Ukraine. Yovanovitch, who spent her career fighting corruption in the former Soviet Union, was dumped because the President had allied himself with Ukrainians who wanted to stop America’s anti-corruption efforts. He personally ordered her fired. He spoke threateningly of her during a phone call with Ukraine’s new President and did it again, on Twitter, while she was testifying on Capitol Hill. No previous President—of either party—has ever acted in this way.
Glasser concludes with the thought that Yovanovitch insists upon the idea that “there remains an American national interest, as opposed to a Republican interest, a Democratic interest, or a Presidential interest.”
“She was an Ambassador from our past, and maybe from our future. But not, sadly, from our present,” Glasser says.
Whether Yovanovitch is a “badass woman” or not, whether she will change the course of history or not, she has certainly changed the direction and tenor of these impeachment proceedings for the better, for the indisputable truth, for America’s future.
