Monday, March 07, 2022

What We Should Do About Ukraine

I'm doing my best not to contribute to the insta-expert phenomenon. My basic answer is, "I have absolutely no idea." Everything I think about this stuff is driven by 20+ years of observing that The Blob (very broadly defined) is populated (not only) with corrupt lunatics who would send droney to double tap a wedding for one month of a mortgage payment, and those are the people who tend to screech the loudest about how everything we do is motivated pure and noble humanitarianism.

"Our" actual appetite to for humanitarianism is very limited, and even our less personal profit-motivated foreign policy is driven more by punitive rage than rational self-interest (even with narrow definitions of 'self' here), let alone compassion.

A willingness to accept refugees is really always the simplest thing we can do, and our general lack of willingness to do that is always a good measure of how much "we" actually give a shit.

Too lazy to look it up, but I remember that The Moustache of Understanding had a column (probably several) which was something like, "I supported the war effort I made up in my head, not what the Bush people are doing or even said they were going to do." And, my man, you go to war with the psychopaths in charge you have.

Who "we" and "our" are, precisely, is complex and shifting. The "we" of Biden is not the same as the "we" of Trump or the "we" of Bush. But remember some of the lunatics that Obama kept around... Some are still causing problems today!