Flash trip to Washington to present my film Glory to the Heroes on Capitol Hill.
It had been shown, in France, on the largest public TV station, France 2.
Then released across America in cinemas by Cohen Media Group.
But now, in a few hours, the U.S. Congress!
The heart of the American democracy and, whether we like it or not, of the world!
And the place where, in part, the fates of Taiwan, Mexico, Jerusalem, and Kyiv will be determined.
I’m overwhelmed by the honor bestowed on this travel diary filmed by a French writer.
Grateful to the Ukrainian ambassador, Oksana Markarova, who fought to have the screening take place on the day Congress came back into session, a few hours, perhaps, from the vote to fund $61 billion in military aid crucial to Zelensky’s army.
The heart of the American democracy and, whether we like it or not, of the world!
And crushed by the weight of responsibility: so many friends in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, so many comrades left in the trenches of Bakhmut, so many combatants and civilians, heroes both modest and glorious, who are the characters of the film, who saw the news on Ukrainian sites and who are calling: Will the representative from Texas be there? And Iowa? And congressman X or Y, all of whom the Ukrainians know are reticent to send aid?
The People’s Choice
My emotions run high upon arriving at the Capitol.
It’s the first time that I realize that, in order to get there, it is necessary to climb a hill.
Like in Jerusalem … Like in Rome … Like in all the destined lands where a little more than the history of those who live there is written …
Didn’t the United States imagine itself a second Rome? A new Jerusalem?
The shining city upon the hill …
So spoke the Founding Fathers, who imagined themselves a new Aeneas fleeing, not Troy, but Amsterdam, London, or Paris as they fell prey to the flames of religious wars, landing here where they would re-invent a new Europe.
So thought the inventors of this transnational nation, who remain emblems of human grandeur deserving of their own Mount Rushmore.
And it’s true that the Capitol, on this night, as on all nights, shines brightly on its hilltop.
We’ve seen it ridiculed on House of Cards!
We’ve seen it humiliated, profaned, soiled, during the Trumpist insurrection three years ago!
We’ve forgotten—with its irremediable naïveté and in its inexplicable youth—just how beautiful the Capitol is …
Ukraine on the Line
It’s Reverend Margaret Kibben, chaplain of the House, who opens the session.
Then Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, and her colleagues Joe Wilson, of South Carolina, and Jim Costa and John Garamendi, of California, hammer home that Ukraine’s defense is a question of U.S. national security. Ambassador Markarova reminds the audience that Ukraine is fighting not only for its own freedom but for that of America and the West.
And then, in a room packed also with Pentagon and State Department officials, the film is screened.
Will the representative from Texas be there? And Iowa? And congressman X or Y, all of whom the Ukrainians know are reticent to send aid?
Was there, among the ranks of this strange city made up of the 50 states, an undecided soul or souls who, having seen beyond the numbers, charts, and budgets that ordinarily occupy them (O.K. for your Ukrainian aid, but you give us our Mexican wall in exchange), would see the faces of women, children, and men crushed by suffering?
I hope so.
But I know that the United States is, for better or worse, the place on the planet that best exemplifies the “butterfly effect” theory, which, through some secret quantum physics, causes an earthquake on the other side of the world.
For worse? The most global of all elections is the result of 50 local elections decided by obscure matters of businesses closing in Iowa or the price of wheat in Minnesota.
For better? This nation of pioneers—having been conceived as the eldest daughter of a Protestant liberalism that sets as the measure of Politics not the crowd or the party but the subject, the individual, and their initiative—is never beyond startling, or surprising, or reversing course.
May that be the case on this Ukrainian vote.
May this assembly, at the decisive moment, keep in mind the credo, which it shares with this other Protestant, French writer: I believe in the virtues of the few who are the arbiters of the destiny of all.
And may the United States remember that it is one of the rare lands where, when all seems lost and the Cassandras are triumphant, a dice throw is still possible; a roulette, not Russian but American; a grain of sand, just one, thrown in the works to derail the evil machine.
Double or nothing: a few consciences wake up and revolt for victory in Ukraine; or the beginning of a long night of illiberalism and barbarism.
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, writer, and filmmaker who has visited Ukraine multiple times since the Russian invasion
