What I should have also said is that you, Devac, are neither of the two people who expressed either of those arguments, but they were made to me on the same day as our exchange. I should have lead with that, hahha, instead I just got on a soapbox with zero warning. Prognosis: general anger, I guess (and sorry again). We help sometimes, but even in modern history, this country has made mistakes enough for me to feel like there is some ambiguity in the net benevolence of the U.S.'s impact on the rest of the world at times, but Ukraine's situation seems relatively cut and dry. And tragic. I think about it every day. It wouldn't be a proxy war I'd encourage unless the people were so keen to defend their sovereignty and if it didn't have major geopolitical ramifications. Heh, also I saw a clip the other day from Russian (/state) TV where a pundit said something like "America calling Putin a fascist? Putin? What about Trump? How can you not understand that Trump is an even worse fascist??", and I was like cool whataboutism, but also, hilarious, the op-ed author they're railing against (Tim Snyder. it's always Snyder) has said almost the exact same thing. Apiring-to-be-even worse fascist* is the only correction I'd make. Then, I start wondering about the relatively small, but probably growing segment of the Russian population who can still successfully navigate the information hellscape, and realize what a terrible time that's gotta be. I feel for 'em.
Weird. I'm getting gmail notifications, I got one for your reply. Swear I'll get to gamma ray calibration soon :).