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The Soul of a Team

Some think that a baseball team is only a business. I believe a baseball team has a fragile soul that has to be cultivated. Yes, the team has to make money, but you can make money and still protect the soul.

The Cardinals have sold their soul to the “grow-’em -until-you-have-to pay-em” philosophy. In this business model you develop young players until they are eligible for free agency. Then you down-size. No player stays with the team for more than six years, because they are less affordable then.  Most will be moved earlier to refill the coffers with fresh assets. That’s how the Cardinals lost Wilson Contreras, Nolan Arenado, and Brendan Donovan. They all wanted to play for this team, but they had become a financial liability. The Cardinals sold their soul to the talent market.

Arenado is grateful to play for a team that is playoff bound, but he would have  preferred to play for the Cardinals. Contreras wanted to stay, but the Cards had a surplus of catchers and first basemen on their shelves.  He led the team in home runs and played a serviceable first base. Donovan had put down roots in the community. He played wherever they asked him to play, and he did it well. These guys were the soul of the team. They left a void in the soul that will not soon be refilled.

The Cardinals brought untested talent to replace them, but they could not preserve the soul. The new players are only here until they become free agents, because then they will cost too much. That will leave holes again to be filled with untested talent. The team loses its identity, and the fans lose their heroes, but, hey, it’s a business..

With the trade of Brendan Donovan the St.Louis Cardinals have now emptied their roster of every consistent hitter, except Alex Burleson, to contribute to the lackluster offense. The jury is out on all the pitching prospects, but suffice it to say, there are none with proven experience to be a number 1 pitcher.

But we know a few things about the offense: it has no pop, it has no one to hit for average, and it retains some of the worst strikeout hitters on the team.

These three masters-of-the-strikeout project to be starters in 2026

Name                Strikeouts Per At-Bat

Nolan Gorman         .387

Jordan Walker         .347

Thomas Sagghese    .302

And, by the way, the last hitter they traded  .   . . .

Brendan Donovan    .146

Strikeouts are the least productive and the most pathetic hole in the offense. Based on the last three years’ performances, there is little reason to think these three players will turn it around this year. There is nothing more disheartening than to see any of these three come to the plate with men on base.  It is draining to keep hoping they will mature as hitters.

The Cardinals have no punch in their remaining starters. Contreras was their best home run threat, with 20 in 2025, before he was jettisoned. They desperately need at least one hitter who can produce thirty home runs per year. You can ‘t be a playoff team without a serious home run threat. You can no longer win consistently by manufacturing runs.

The outfield is particularly anemic. With Alec Burleson at first base that leaves Lars Nootbar, Victor Scott, and Jordan Walker in the outfield. Nootbar had 13 home runs, Walker 6 and Scott 5 in 2025.  Scott, at least, shows some development as a hitter and has  a pulse-pounding command of center field. Nootbar has always been a work in progress. He does not strike out much, but he cannot stay healthy long enough to be a reliable contributor.  Walker has never proven he can hit Major League hitting. If these three ever develop their home run potential, they will soon become free agents and highly marketable.

Springtime is always the season of hope for a baseball team. Maybe the Cardinals will unveil some remarkable hitters, some surprising pitchers. That would be fun. But fans won’t have a history with those players, and they never will. Those players will be grist for the market where other teams thrive. That is sad for fans that want a team with a soul. That will not put butts in seats. How long before the Cardinals realize this?

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Return of Doris Kearns Goodwin

Tuesday at the Speaker’s Series in Powell Hall historian Doris Kearns Goodwin commented that she had “grown up with St. Louis,”  having spoken at the Series twice before.  She was interviewed by the Speaker’s Series emcee Patrick Murphy.

She is the same buoyant evangelist for history that she has always been. She fervently believes in the power of history to teach us how to live in the present. She has devoted her life to​ the lives of four Presidents in particular: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Her current project returns to the era of Teddy Roosevelt​.  Showdown in the Gilded Age, she calls it.

Kearns Goodwin believes the character of Presidents makes them great. The best ones have humility, empathy, resiliency, accountability, and ambition.

She believes Lincoln had these qualities more than any other President, especially the right mix of humility and ambition. As she wrote in Team of Rivals, Lincoln was terrified when he ran for President against William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates that he lacked the experience of his opponents. He promised himself he would appoint them to his Cabinet if he was elected, and he did, over the objections of his advisers. They were afraid these rivals would dominate his administration, but Lincoln had both the confidence and humility to include them. He profited from their experience, yet kept his independence.

Kearns Goodwin said the current President most lacks the empathy that Lincoln and the Roosevelts demonstrated. Her optimism is based on the determination of ordinary Americans, who have risen to the crises of every era: the Civil War, the wealth extremes of the Gilded Age, the Depression, and the Civil Rights movement.  Each time they elected the President who was ideal to meet the crisis.

Every President she studied learned to face personal crises before he became President. For Lincoln it was his lack of formal education which undermined his confidence throughout his political career. For Teddy Roosevelt it was the death of his wife and his mother on consecutive days. His depression led him to flee to South Dakota where he regrouped and learned to appreciate the diversity of rural and urban America . For Franklin Roosevelt it was contracting polio at the peak of his physical development. He founded a resort for people handicapped like himself, and he developed compassion for his constituents. When he was elected at the peak of the Depression he told the voters, “This is not your fault,” and promised jobs for everyone.

Lyndon Johnson became President because of the assassination of John Kennedy and had to meet the public grief with hope for restoration. He decided he would pursue Kennedy’s Civil Rights bill, which was DOA in Congress. His advisors told him it was a losing cause. It would be fatal to his Presidency. Johnson famously stormed, “Then what the hell is the Presidency for?” A veteran of Congressional battles, Johnson wined and dined every member of Congress and promised them  their pet projects for their home districts.  He was probably the only Congressperson that could have accomplished the task of  passing this bill, Kearns Goodwin said.

She worked as a researcher for Johnson when she was still a graduate student at Harvard. She recalled how she had danced with Johnson at a reception for his assistants, and he told her he wanted her for his research team, when she finished at Harvard. An FBI background check revealed that she had been an anti-war activist against the Vietnam War, but he appointed her anyway confident that he could win her over. She began to worry that Johnson had romance in mind, when she worked closely with him.

One time when he asked her to his ranch Johnson confided, “Know why I like you so much?” Uh oh, she thought, here it comes. “Because you remind me of my mother.” She was startled and relieved to find out his attention was innocent. She became his biographer and spent countless hours interviewing and shadowing Johnson to complete the project.

She said all the Presidents she studied were devoted to learning. Lincoln had read only one book when he completed his formal education, but he read voraciously in the classics throughout his life.  Harry Truman was the only President with only a high school education when he entered office, but he had read every book in his public library before he was elected. He maintained his devotion to reading as President.

Her husband, Dick Goodwin, had been a speechwriter for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Kearns Goodwin recounted their research  to compile documents from over three hundred boxes of his memorabilia into some publishable form.   They toiled for six years until his death in 2018, and Kearns Goodwin went on to write and publish An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is an active scholar and writer at 84 years old.

 

 

 

 

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Necessary and Self-Indulgent

Sometimes I worry that my gratitude is really presumption of deserving a life better than those less fortunate. I give thanks, not heedless of terrorized fellow citizens, the cold and hungry, the suffering of the sick, the victims of poverty and bereavement. In spite of all this I am grateful:

  • To be seventy-seven and healthier than I expected to be
  • To be married to a kind, thoughtful spouse, just as old, even healthier
  • That together we cleared (the important half of) our driveway of eight inches of snow yesterday
  • That my back is not complaining today
  • To savor Victoria’s rich and spicy bean soup, her Cincinnati chili, her spicy enchiladas
  • To enjoy the first cup of strong, dark coffee
  • To inhale Victoria’s sugar-free apple pie or any dessert that lacks cane sugar
  • To share the predictability of our upbringings in evangelical churches
  • To share our favorite authors, especially Richard Rohr, John Meacham,  A.J. Levine
  • To watch together anything produced by Ken Burns.
  • To share our space with bluebirds, cardinals, red-breasted woodpeckers, does, bucks and fawns.
  • To share the unbearable suspense of “Severance,” “Down Cemetery Road,” Slow Horses,” “Maigret,” “Pluribus”
  • To enjoy the carnal
  • That I am warm and housed in zero-degree weather
  • That I can now write as much as I like, and I still like it.
  • To have started a Writer’s group that kept going through the pandemic and is still active today
  • To know writers who love each other even more than they love to write
  • To sing in worship-choral, congregational, devotional- e.g. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” mostly with tears of gratitude
  • To read and reflect on the books and meditations of Father Richard Rohr
  • To learn from those struggling with faith in Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt and Do I Stay Christian?
  • To read and reflect on the Emergent Church from Phyllis Tickle and sociologists Gerardo Marti and Gladys Caniel
  • To read and reflect on the novels of Matthew Quick and Angie Thomas
  • To assimilate the beautiful and the profound in the Psalms, Isaiah, Jonah, the  Gospel of Luke
  • To witness the performances of rehabilitated inmates in Prison Performing Arts
  • To meet PPA actors and learn their stories
  • To be studying and learning from the prophets of yesterday and today
  • To believe that another prophet (s) will step up in the fullness of time
  • To have traveled more widely in the last seven years than I did in my entire sixty years before
    • especially places where you can walk to everything: Hanalei, Santa Fe, Savannah, San Antonio, Assisi, Williamsburg, much of New Orleans.
  • To anticipate every spring a transformed baseball team, esp. the Cardinals, esp. at Spring Training
  • To see a center fielder run down a ball in deep center
  • To see a pitcher working fast and throwing strikes
  • To be present at any baseball game
  • To have a stomach that tolerates my excesses with spicy foods
  • To devour any cheesy pizza, esp. Mellow Mushroom, Dewey’s and Vito’s (spicy)
  • To imbibe the joy of Porter and Stout, especially at Heavy Riff, Third Wheel pubs and from “Total Wine and More”
  • To savor my brother-in-law’s sugar-free peanut butter cookies
  • To eat peanut butter with almost anything
  • For indulgent readers – every writer’s dream
  • For you, if you got this far in a litany of indulgences

I apologize that this has degenerated to the very personal and self-indulgent litany of joy. In my defense, it was very good for me.

I would add one gratitude that divine generosity probably did not supervise:

The Patriots are going to the Super Bowl!

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Happy 250, America!

Why shouldn’t I be among the first to wish America a happy 250th?  It is a good time to get perspective from the bottom of the curve.

We have much to celebrate. A nation

  1.  Founded by people who took unimaginable risks to sail to the edge of the known world
  2. Inhabited by misunderstood, but spiritual indigenous people. Some had ventured a democratic government.
  3. Settled by diverse white people, from the traditional, more British traditions, to the religious outsiders: the Puritans, Quakers, Catholics
  4. Sharing the principle that government was by the consent of the governed.
  5. Of compromising people who merged the agricultural anglophiles with the mercantile congregationalists to forge a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution.
  6. Of industrious people who worked the soil and founded small businesses.
  7. Of intellectual people who adopted the best principles of the Enlightenment in their government
  8. Of equitable people who saw the dangers of an established church and guaranteed religious freedom.
  9. Of literate citizens who guaranteed freedom of expression in journalism, speech, and assembly.
  10. Of inspired people who devised government, economy, and religious toleration appropriate for a new continent

And that is only the first fifty years, but it makes you thankful for a good beginning.

To be fair, the nation did not get it all right.

  1. Colonists did not always value religious freedom. They persecuted the Baptists, the Catholics, the Quakers, the Anabaptists.
  2. Colonists drove the native people from their land by violence and white supremacy.
  3. Terrorists attacked a British mercantile ship and called it a “Tea Party.”
  4. Loyalists were persecuted during the Revolutionary War.
  5. Politicians wrote vicious attacks on each other, usually anonymously.
  6. The right to vote was restricted by property ownership, race, gender, other local requirements.
  7. An economy was developed based on slave labor.
  8. One human race was qualified as 3/5 of a person.
  9. Immigrants were targeted by the Alien and Sedition Act
  10.  Justice was sometimes short-circuited by lynching and tar and feathering

Just as you can love a spouse with all their “flaws,” you can love your country with its mixed record on democracy and justice.  Just as in marital bless, you probably discuss the flaws and find out where you’re wrong. Or occasionally you recognize together how your relationship can be improved.

We do not have to protect a strong relationship by denying its flaws. No one should be ashamed if the United States is viewed with a critical eye. If it can’t take criticism it is a fragile system indeed. We did not come this far without Amendments to the Constitution. We did not (usually)pass legislation without compromise.  If we disrespected our rivals, it drove us to deadlocks, even wars. But we did not sanction mean criticism or blatant prejudice.

If we are going to celebrate the glory of the United States, let’s be humble enough to admit its flaws. Don’t be the married couple that never had a disagreement or a fight. Be the honest citizens who love their country for  all its faults. That’s how you celebrate an anniversary.

 

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The Sound of Shattered of Baseball Dreams

Every year I have to clutter my blog with a baseball commentary–usually about the St. Louis Cardinals. I apologize to those who couldn’t care less, but for those who can indulge me, I’ll offer some background.

The Cardinals are officially in a “re-building” year. They hired Chaim Bloom as their general manager, a man with a reputation for rebuilding. I’d say he’s had mixed success with other MLB teams. Seeing is believing.

“Re-building” is like the signs on the highway that say “Under Construction-Thank you for your patience.”  The sound of shattered baseball dreams. Unfortunately the Cardinals have been re-building since I’ve lived here–seven years. They have jettisoned the expensive talent to get what they call “prospects,” but they remain prospects. So patience has been required for more than the 2026 season.

This year they cut loose the rest of the expensive talent–pitcher Sonny Gray, first baseman Wilson Contreras, third baseman Nolan Arenado.  This is totally consistent with the long-term plan.

Given the heave-ho of the heaviest ballast what can we expect of the 2026 Cardinals? Soaring up to the upper half of the weakest division  in baseball? Weak hitting, uncertain starting rotation, potentially stronger bullpen, good managing. If they win as much as they lose we should be happy.

But I am not happy. In their dismantling of their offense, they obtained an array of questionable pitchers: Hunter Dobbins, Richard Fitts, Dustin May, and Matt Svanson. And they  just signed free agent Ryne Stanek. Never heard of them? Me neither. If two of these guys qualify for the starting rotation that would be wonderful, but IF.

If a team does not score runs, it doesn’t matter how good the pitching is. The Cards have stripped their offense, especially if they ultimately trade away their best player–Brendon Donovan. That is going to happen, and I will be heart-broken. A very versatile fielder, who did whatever the  Cards asked of him. Also their best hitter.

They need a dependable power hitter, probably an outfielder, plus a third baseman. They do have some minor league talent that could fill one of those positions, but they need to find a legitimate power hitter.

No, not Nolan Gorman! His strike-out-to-homer run ratio is 7:1. Not entertaining. Not Lars Nootbar. Great teammate, who can not stay off the disabled list. He has never had enough consecutive days in the line-up to get his swing back. Alec Burleson? Promising. I keep hearing that word.

They did just sign a seventeen-year old power hitter for $2.3 million dollars, but I’d like to live to see him hit 30 homers with the Cardinals. I may not have that much time.

I am going down to Spring Training again to gather some hope for the future.  Last spring I saw Gordon Graceffo and Michael McGreevy pitch, and they gave me hope.  Then they both showed promise in their rookie seasons. But I saw NO hitters with some pop. Discouraging. But I’ll migrate to Jupiter, FL at the end of February again to get a hope transfusion. One week, three games, and some looking at the practice fields. The weather is good; it inspires optimism.

The fans are not going to tolerate “re-building” without some power and pitching in the park this year.  That is what makes entertainment. No “wait till the year after next year.”  The team needs to be competitive now, no matter what its  promise.  Hear that, Chaim Bloom?

 

 

 

 

 

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Literate Citizen Replacement Theory

First of all, what is a literate citizen? The one with the ability to read and write. But to read what? Write what? Read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights?   Or the sonnets of Shakespeare?  Dirty Teenage literature? That is what the literacy conspiracists are demanding. There are literacy pretenders out there who are making citizens feel bad about themselves,

Functional literacy pretenders: These conspirators begin by asking, What can you read? The comics?  A children’s book? An advertisement for a new car? If you can read an advertisement, how do you know it is telling the truth? Do you know how to find out? This goes beyond citizens’ literacy, but these smart-asses say they know how to find multiple sources on what to believe about auto advertisements. They think they won’t be fast-talked by car salesmen, if they do reearch? Watch out for these know-it-alls.

Critical literacy pretenders: They can find writers that claim to know when politicians are telling the truth. Isn’t it enough to believe the media we trust? Even when the President calls them the “lying media”? Is consulting more than one source a requirement for literacy? How do we decide what source is true and what is false?  We have to stick with the devil we know. Stick with your favorite old white guy TV personality. Put that in your critical literacy, you elitist!

Fluent  literacy braggarts : Six in 10 Americans (59%) say they read at least one book in 2025, a new YouGov survey finds. That’s in line with similar YouGov surveys in 2024 and 2023. Most Americans who did read books only finished a handful of books, while a minority of Americans were plowing through the pages. [https://www.literaturelust.com/post/what-does-it-really-mean-to-be-literate-in-america]. These claims are probably false. Watch out for those six-in-ten readers of books. How do we know they didn’t lie to Youtube?   Most citizens, like our President, get all their information from the news, weather and sports on TV. Those are people you can trust, not the pseudo-literates who claim they read whole books!

Evaluative literacy eggheads: What about censorship of school reading? What do the school principals say? If you have objected to a book, have you read it? How do we prove a book is unfit for eleventh graders? Present evidence of dangerous language, as the prosecutor of a crime would do? They say: Do you know the definition of “pornography?” Wait,  we are supposed to do all that just to protect our kids from porn?  I know pornography when I see it. It’s stuff I hide in a special drawer. Lawyers have their lawyer language:

pornography n. pictures and/or writings of sexual activity intended solely to excite lascivious feelings of a particularly blatant and aberrational kind, such as acts involving children, animals, orgies, and all types of sexual intercourse. (https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx selected=1551#:~:text=Search%20Legal%20Terms% 20and%20 De finitions&text=n.,all%20types%20of%20sexual%20intercourse)

OK maybe literate people don’t have to know the meaning of  “aberrational “or “lascivious” See below for assistance*

These book evaluators will say: In order to decide if the book intends to solely incite lascivious feelings you would have to read the whole book. Otherwise you couldn’t know if the sexual behavior was relevant to the story or “solely lascivious”.  The legalists claim burden of proof is on the book protester.  O.K. this sounds like a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo.Let’s hire a “parents rights”  lawyer to evaluate the pornography part. Censorship does not come cheap. You have to fight fire with money, not “evaluative literacy.” We don’t have to read smutty books to prove they are dangerous.

We, the Literate Citizens of the U.S.A. are sick of feeling bad, because we don’t devote all our free time to literacy.  We are doing fine trusting the opinions we know, and letting teachers and lawyers do the academic stuff, as long as they don’t have a political agenda.  We know when they have a political agenda, because our trusted news media and attorneys tell us so. We believe them and that’s good enough. Don’t bother us with book reviews.

Literate citizens could be replaced or overpowered by all these functional, critical, fluent and evaluative literate pretenders. Keep your eyes open for these eggheads. Break up the conspiracy of  pretenders in your high schools, libraries and consumer rights groups before it starts. The Literate Citizens must control a free society without the conspiracy of these fancy types threatening to replace us..

*Aberrational- departing from some accepted standard of what is normal

Lascivious (of a person, manner, or gesture) feeling or revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Sharper than a double-edged sword”

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Emma’s Advice for Lonely Hearts

You can not control the world spinning around you, but finally you can take responsibility for yourself.  You could take this away from Kate Hamill’s hilarious play adaptation of Emma, a novel that deserves the stage as much as anything that Jane Austen wrote.  It has all the love intrigue of a Shakespearian comedy, and all the social satire of Austen’s other novels. Kate Hamill has made her own industry of dramatizing Austen, having previously adapted Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. 

Adelin Philips, in the title role in the production at The Repertory Theater of St.  Louis, energizes it with vivacious asides to the audience and supreme over-confidence for her manipulation of unattached couples into courtship and marriage.  She takes us into her confidence about her plans for unsuspecting men and women, who undoubtedly need partners, as she tells it.  She is so clever and charming that you want to forgive her shameless schemes and presumptuous pairings.

Emma’s featured project involves finding the right suitor for the rather dim and timid Harriet Smith (Lize Lewy) who had set her sights on Robert Martin (Ryan Omar Stack), a tenant farmer with a mutual affection. Yet Emma decides Harriet can do better and tries to match her up with the Rev. Mr. Elton. Elton misinterprets Emma’s match-making attempts as a flirtation, and so the misunderstandings of courtship are launched, as if Shakespeare himself had designed the intrigue.

Despite her class prejudice and presumptuous control of others’ lives, Adelin Philips’ Emma won me over with her good intentions, her eagerness to take us into her confidence,  and her ultimate self-realization that she had failed as a matchmaker and as savant of the best qualities of human nature.  At the climax of the production she shows convincing contrition for her presumptuous manipulations and especially for failing to recognize the best match of all–her with Mr.Knightly, who is five years her senior, but secretly devoted to her from the start of the play.

Appearances to the contrary, this is not a review, even though the play deserves public accolades. It is more like my reflection on our wish to control the events around us, without taking stock of our own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe this is a lesson we have heard enough, but I doubt it.

When we witness the chaos and brutality on the national stage, we, too, desire to set the mess in order with a few well-chosen words. How could we not?  We are caught up in all the international furor, national incivility and regional complicity that signify nothing. We wake every day with dim hope to make the matches that would forge happy relationships.  Or perhaps, like the Emma of the final act, we realize how completely helpless we are to change anyone or anything.

Like Emma we realize we suck at harmonizing the world, because the world has its own momentum, even unfathomable destiny, that takes no heed of us.  That does not mean we throw up our hands, so much as allowing ourselves to identify with the world predicament. We are not mere observers, we are part of the mess, a fragment of chaos, brutality and dissension. Not a prime mover, but a participant in our own innocuous way.

The myth that we control matters, even by our desperate mutterings, has been shattered. We are along for the ride, even though we may get out and push back on the pointless parade. We do not determine the coupling or de-coupling of society. We have our own coupling to worry about. That was the message for Emma and her St. Louis audience with a front row seat on her fruitless orchestrations.

 All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
(from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques)
Even as I write I take myself more seriously than I should.  I am not Thomas Paine, who motivated the American Revolution. I aspired to be a writer with that kind of influence when I was in tenth grade writing about the Muckrakers. Those writers exposed injustice and contributed to reform at the turn of the Twentieth Century.  That was the influence I wanted to exert, even the world-forming influence of Thomas Payne: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Now I write for my own amusement and perhaps for a handful others.   I celebrate Emma with her best of intentions and her vulnerability to be exposed for her own presumption.  Though I have no control over the outcome of world disintegration, I have some control about whether my life will be regarded as comedy or tragedy. A comedy comes of finding a realistic perspective, a tragedy of finding it too late.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infusions of Grace

For joyful music in my mind when I awake,

For my love giving hugs for no good reason.

For the fall of gingko leaves,

A brilliant lemon-yellow carpet on our driveway,

Abrupt and lovely as Susan*,

For missing her every day.

For deer passing through, slurping the birdbath,

Staring into our glass cage,

For the doe, “Gimpy,” looking both ways

limping across the street.

For our electronic angel

Five-foot-LED-network with outstretched arms,

Uplifted wings, fading red sash and sleeve cuffs,

A compressed constellation, reminding us,

The Lord has come,

Keeps coming,

Into our darkening moments.

For healing infusions of grace,

Glad thanks.

 

 

Grace and love,

Bill Tucker

  • Susan is (my spouse) Victoria’s daughter, lost to us suddenly through an automobile  accident on May 7, 2024.

 

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A Naive and Immoral Treaty

One of the most reliable commentators on European politics has warned us that both Ukraine and the United States could be severely compromised by the proposed peace treaty with Russia.

Anne Applebaum evaluated the lopsided treaty in her recent article in The Atlantic, “Trump Has a Recipe for War and Corruption, Not Peace” November 22, 2025).  The conditions are entirely advantageous to Russia and outrageously  undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and ability to defend itself. I will quote  (in italics) from some the key conditions cited by Applebaum. My comments are written in boldface following each point in the article.

The 28-point peace plan that the United States and Russia want to impose on Ukraine and Europe is misnamed. It is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future. In the meantime, it benefits unnamed Russian and American investors, at the expense of everyone else.

The most disturbing part of this plan is that Ukraine does not benefit at all, except to gain a temporary cease-fire and a potential end to the carnage.  Based on its initial aggression across the Ukrainian border, there is no reason to trust Russia with any cease-fire.  It is also unreasonable to reward Russia for its incursion into a sovereign nation, since it invites them to repeat this aggression into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Would NATO protect these member nations? It is possible it would be restrained by some members, such as Hungary, Turkey, and some southeastern states.

  • [Ukraine was] told to agree to it by Thanksgiving or lose all further U.S. support. Even if the plan falls apart, this arrogant and confusing ultimatum, coming only days after the State Department authorized the sale of anti-missile technology to Ukraine, will do permanent damage to America’s reputation as a reliable ally, not only in Europe but around the world.

Why should any nation agree to a treaty it had no part in developing? How can the United States presume to negotiate without the input of the most-affected party to the treaty? It is embarrassing to me that such pressure would be applied to a sovereign nation. Have we no shame?

  • The United States would recognize Russian rule over Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk—all of which are part of Ukraine. Russia would, in practice, be allowed to keep territory it has conquered in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. In all of these occupation zones, Russian forces have carried out arrests, torture, and mass repression of Ukrainian citizens, and because Russia would not be held accountable for war crimes, they could continue to do so with impunity. Ukraine would withdraw from the part of Donetsk that it still controls—a heavily reinforced and mined territory whose loss would open up central Ukraine to a future attack.

When has the United States defended the right of one nation to annex the territory of another? Even discounting the loss to Ukraine, it is a compromise of U.S. principle of the sovereignty of nations, making it an unreliable ally.  The terms of this treaty give Russia all status and the U.S. only embarrassment.

  • it then imposes severe restrictions on Ukrainian sovereignty: Ukraine must “enshrine in its constitution” a promise to never join NATO. Ukraine must shrink the size of its armed forces to 600,000, down from 900,000. Ukraine may not host foreign troops on its soil. Ukraine must hold new elections within 100 days, a demand not made of Russia, a dictatorship that has not held free elections for more than two decades. . . . The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with its secret protocols, brought us World War II. The Yalta agreement gave us the Cold War. The Witkoff-Dmitriev pact, if it holds, will fit right into that tradition.

The designers of this treaty are fully aware that Russia could threaten Ukraine again. Why would Ukraine expect the U.S. to defend them, based on the utter capitulation to Russia stipulated by this treaty? Demands of shrinking armed forces and holding new elections might as well make Ukraine a puppet state of Russia, similar to the status of the former Iron Curtain countries. Have we learned nothing from those fatal concessions to the Soviet Union after World War II? Are we that naive or that callous?

  • Ukraine “would receive security guarantees.” But it does not describe what those guarantees would be . . .

Believe this and I have a bridge to sell you in New York.

  • The United States would lift sanctions on Russia, losing any existing leverage over President Vladimir Putin; invite Russia to rejoin the G8; and reintegrate Russia into the world economy. Awkward wording, evident throughout the document, suggests that at least some of it was originally written in Russian.

Here the United States yields considerable power over to Russia. Why are we cozying up to such a ruthless and unreliable partner? This provision makes the United States look weak. All kinds of red flags should be alerting members of Congress that we are giving away the store. Republicans and Democrats alike will cringe at this naive concession.

  • the U.S. would also somehow take charge of the $100 billion in frozen Russian assets, for example, supposedly to invest this money in Ukraine and receive “50% of the profits from this venture.” Europeans, whose banks actually hold most of these assets, would receive nothing. European taxpayers, who currently provide almost all of the military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, are nevertheless expected to contribute $100 billion to Ukraine’s reconstruction.

Not content to weaken the U.S. the treaty presumes to  weaken the members of NATO. This condition will be a non-starter for these countries, since they are not as witless as the writers of this treaty.

  •  the United States and Russia would “enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities,” according to the plan. This is no surprise: Putin has spoken of “several companies” positioning themselves to resume business ties between his country and the United States.
  •  U.S. investors who want to reopen the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline, part of which was blown up by Ukrainian saboteurs early in the war. One American familiar with the plan told the Financial Times that the U.S. investors were essentially being offered “money for nothing,” which is, obviously, an attractive prospect.

The provisions to enter into economic co-operation with Russia could only be the suggestion of U.S. business interests, eager to profit from the potential investments in these industries. To think that the U.S. would profit economically from Ukraine’s defeat is a sickening reflection on our integrity.  Have we no shame?

For a decade, Russia has been seeking to divide Europe and America, to undermine NATO and weaken the transatlantic alliance. This peace plan, if accepted, will achieve that goal. There is a long tradition of great powers in Europe making deals over the heads of smaller countries, leading to terrible suffering.

The long-term consequences of our alliances are either overlooked or ignored. We are being asked to imperil our friends by conceding to our predatory rival. There are no conditions of this treaty that honor or benefit Ukraine or the United States. It is humiliating to consider our country a party to such an agreement.

About the Author (Of  The Atlantic article)