Yeah. I see way too many people talking about how based Putin and the Russian government is. These are the same people who fall in love with various Presidential candidates based on positions they have either imagined they have or have been encouraged to believe the candidate has.

A true look at the Russian government & Putin shows that he isn't all that awesome and doesn't hold the views or protect the people they believe he does. They want to believe these things because our current Western governments are so horrible to us. It is a pipe dream to believe that any corrupt oligarchic system of government is going to be there for their people any more than our oligarch controlled government looks after us.

Amen.

Not wrong but not complete.

Our country was based on the idea, the ideal, that people - individuals - would have the maximum of freedom and responsibility that was possible. It was expanded to add the idea that we would support those who wanted that same ideal. Manifest destiny first blocked the idea of conquest in the Americas, and then that same idea, that same meme, was expanded to cover the globe.

This ideal was corrupted from the very beginning, manipulators leaning on it to excuse venality and power-gathering. Even so, the ideal itself helped to keep that corruption from becoming too great, as it would be used to judge the corrupt who rose to prominence.

But in the end it seems to have been eroded to the point where the corrupt are disdaining that ideal. Look at how the media took one trucker's desire for "freedom" and spun it as meaningless or worse. The ideal is being killed off.

That ideal had been used to paint Ukraine as a free nation, living under Russia's shadow. That vision may only have been skin deep but our support being withdrawn as an army invades just places even more pressure on that ideal, rightful or not. In a world reduced to black and white, where we either support a corrupt puppet government that's nominally on our side, paying lip service to that ideal, or disdain it and allow it to fall to another corrupt government, is causing the US to quake to our roots.

Whichever way it falls, it forebodes further progression towards the death of our ideal.