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What’s Up with the Inversion of Mentalities?
I was listening to a recent podcast of Mock and Daisy and they were mentioning how all their progressive friends want to fund the Ukraine war effort and how they as righties basically think this war is a useless money pit. They were surprised how their old hippie friends and now gung-ho for war and now they seem like the anti-Vietnam protestors.
What are the psychological reasons for the sharp switch? I know the policy reasons for and against pretty well and I am sure that the vast majority of my fellow Ricochetti do as well but I am more interested in the underlying psychology for so many lefties to Ukraine and why there are such deep divisions on the right?
What kind of value sets lead one to support to Ukraine and another to complain about spending one red cent in the current war?
Published in General
If you really truly are pro-democracy then you shoul dhave found it abhorent that the Biden/Kerry/Nuland installation of our CIA’s choice for the president of the Ukraine meant two different non-democratic activities:
One) the ouster of the legitimately elected Victor Yanukovich was the first anti-democratic activity brought about by the USA. (Had Yanukovich eagerly bought into the notion that signing on the dotted line for the benefit of the IMF and the World bank, against the best options for his people, then this man would not have been deposed.)
Even the Cato Institute, not a big fan of Yanukovich, had this to say in his defense:
Despite his leadership defects and character flaws, Yanukovych had been duly elected in balloting that international observers considered reasonably free and fair—about the best standard one can hope for outside the mature Western democracies. A decent respect for democratic institutions and procedures meant that he ought to be able to serve out his lawful term as president, which would end in 2016.
Two) the eventual installation of a new president, more to our CIA’s liking: Petro Poroshenko.
Also from the Cato Institute: The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking. Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post‐Yanukovych government. The U.S‑favored candidates included Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the man who became prime minister once Yanukovych was ousted from power. During the telephone call, Nuland stated enthusiastically that “Yats is the guy” who would do the best job.
Radio Free Europe Daisy Sindelar also demonstrated her doubts over the ouster of Yanukovich:
https://www.rferl.org/a/was-yanukovychs-ouster-constitutional/25274346.html
Is anti-homosexuality the only Christian value that counts? Peace, love of neighbor, love of enemies, humility, righteousness, love of God, fear of God, patience, kindness, forgiveness, mercy, etc…- all that goes out the window (as it does in wars like this one) because some dudes want to get it on with each other? Insane.
Putin doesn’t uphold Christian values. If he claims to be a Christian, he betrays them. He makes a mockery of them. He’s caused immense death, destruction, and suffering. The hatred his actions are breeding, the pain and the evil they cause, do far more damage to a culture than a small portion of the population who engage in same-sex relations. If, God forbid, Putin came to be seen as some kind of Christian leader, the damage to Christian credibility would be immense.
Great point.
When a Christian allies himself with an ex-KGB agent, this might not be a sign of health for Christianity.
I see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as similar to the conflict between North Korea and South Korea.
On one side you have dictatorship (Putin’s Russia and Kim Jong Un’s North Korea) and on the other side you have democracy (Ukraine and South Korea).
I support democracy and, thus, I support Ukraine to the hilt. I support providing Ukraine the weapons, training and intelligence they need to eject Putin’s military from Ukrainian territory as it was prior to Putin’s 2014 invasion.
Victory over Putin!
I don’t know where this idea came from that Christianity is nothing but a hippy pacifist movement. With one breath you mouth this platitude to be about peace and loving your enemy but that somehow doesn’t apply to putin who needs the full weight of arms against him and many young Russians who are conscripted and have had no choice themselves. The fact of the matter is there is no good guy in this war. I’m not interested in supporting a corrupt country like Ukraine. I am not interested in excusing putin either. They’re both trash. One might be less trashy than the other. But they’re both trash and what transpires over there affects me in no way. What does affect me is my tax dollars being spent on a quagmire i would rather not be in. Getting invaded doesn’t make you a good country and being a joke of a worthless comedian who manages to become president while you’re invaded doesn’t make you Churchill.
Russia isn’t a Christian society by any measure. The abortion rates there are through the roof. The alcoholic rates are through the roof. Ukraine was a cesspool deserving no admiration before the war. The whole situation is sad and it would be nice if Russia didn’t invade. It would be nice if Ukraine was worth what propagandists for this war claim its worth. That isn’t reality and we should have no part of it. I want my borders secure and ukraines borders don’t matter one damn to me.
The reason for the change in opinions is very simple.
The Federal government is too powerful. It is almost unlimited in its power, and is increasingly ignoring limits it has been given, trusting to the fact that courts are too slow to stop them, and (thanks to John Roberts) often won’t even do that.
Because of this, everyone looks to the federal government to get what they want or stop what they don’t want. In order to get school choice you have to agree that a huge wall on the southern border is vital. In order to limit the death penalty and to rehabilitate criminals instead of merely punishing them, they have to agree that Johnny needs to have surgery so he can be a girl.
Each side of our polarized spectrum understands that if you lose on any point then you lose on every point. Politics has become an all or nothing fight, where every issue is life and death to every other issue.
The fix for this is to reanimate the 9th and 10th Amendments and amputate most of the government’s reach and power.
Well, I wouldn’t say the “nothing but” part, but these hippie values, if you want to call them that, go all the way back to the source. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. If not, you’ll find it all there in the New Testament.
Of course they apply to Putin. I’ve never said otherwise. But my point is he’s not upholding Christian values. And he’s doing the conscription, by the way, so if you feel sorry for those conscripts (and I do, too), well that’s all the more evidence of his failure to abide by Christian values.
The left does not assume the underdog is always good.
Ukraine is the underdog and the lefts’ ego overrules everything.
Those Who have ambition, but cannot succeed on Their Own measly talents and abilities, find a mission to stand for “the little people,” “down trodden,” “less fortunate.”
If You can’t raise Yerself up through Yer Own accomplishments, then the next best thing is to raise Yerself by standing on the backs of people.
I am glad to meet another fellow patriot who refuses to getaboard the “any way our political leaders desire is a worthwhile cause” train of thought.
A patriot desires war only if:
What a bizarrely restrictive and self-destructive set of rules. After WWII we were supremely rich compared to any other nation in the world and it happened to serve our interests to rehabilitate Germany and Japan, et al. This was a singular event and will likely never occur again.
Nations that try to destroy us have no right to expect that we will save them economically or in any other way. For instance, the reason the war in Afghanistan went so badly is because we tried to help the people there. There is no reason to live in Afghanistan. There’s nothing there. Every country that has warred against them since at least since Alexander has won. When everyone realizes that there is no reason to stay they leave. The Afghans lost, so they have to stay.
Properly waged, the war against Afghanistan should have been named as a war against Afghanistan, Iran, and others, and not a nebulous concept, and we should have punished them, killed as many as reasonably necessary to make them feel intense and real regret for supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and then we should have used the western worthless areas of Afghanistan to threaten Iran and punish them severely as well. The Afghans have no reason to expect us to help them do anything except to beg forgiveness. That is what we should have done, but weasels in the administration of George Bush II kept trying to imagine that those people could be helped. That was our undoing.
I accept yr statements abt Afghanistan.
But pls look at 2 examples that you might consider to be nations that want to destroy us…
Examine, if you will, our first activity against the nation of Iran which was eliminating the popular & legitimately elected leader of that nation, Prime Minister Mossadegh, in 1954.
Our CIA even admitted to this:
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-democracy-in-four-days
Then for the next several decades we supported a draconian leader, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who used terror against any and all dissidents. But hey! What was important for our CIA was that the agency had “properly” allowed their favored clients, the American oil industry, to no longer have to deal with pesky “nationalized” oil policies that Mossadegh had put in place for the benefit of the Iranian people.
How did Iraq try to destroy us? If we really had wanted to deal with the one problem that nation posed for us, we should have pressured the Mossad into eliminating Hussein. Instead we took a very advanced society, in which Christians, Jews, and many Muslim sects lived shoulder to shoulder with others.
We create our enemies and then pursue endless wars to destroy them. I feel if we really have an enemy, which justifies a war, every single non-wheel chaired individual should be involved in the war effort, not just the poorest 19 year olds.
No nation is perfect. I’m sure we did some wrong things, especially if the CIA was involved.
But that doesn’t mean we should tie our hands for future wars.
Unless the same people who were wrong are still in charge.