After all, such a black-and-white approach cuts off the ability to think, to look at the facts, and to address complexity.
But the government and mainstream media is doing exactly the same thing in regards to Ukraine. In essence, they're saying:
You either support without question the new Ukrainian government - including military assistance from the U.S. and NATO - or you're with Putin.As former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry writes:
The demonization of Putin in the Western media has been so total that anyone who dares question the most extreme interpretations of his behavior is denounced as a "Putin apologist." Indeed, any attempt to present a nuanced narrative of what has happened in Ukraine is dismissed as somehow promoting Russian imperialism or spreading Russian propaganda.In the run up to the Iraq war, millions of Americans pointed out that Saddam Hussein might be an awful tyrant, but the "weapons of mass destruction" claims were false and so we shouldn't plunge headlong into a disastrous war. (The protests against the Iraq war were the largest protests in history, and yet the politicians plowed ahead with the disastrous war and refused to listen to the facts ... or the will of the people.)
This oppressive "group think" has, in turn, made formulating any rational policy toward Russia and Ukraine politically impossible in Official Washington.
Millions of patriotic Americans are now saying the same thing about Ukraine. We're saying:
- Ukraine is complicated: the East and Crimean South which were previously part of the Soviet Union support Russia,while most of those living in the Western region of Ukraine despise Russia
- Putin might be an awful tyrant, but there's no evidence that he's trying to take over the world
- The U.S. has long meddled in Ukrainian affairs
- Neo Nazis appear to be causing most of the violence
But we can't afford any more disastrous wars ... and we should stay the h@ll out of conflicts which do not directly threaten the security of the United States.
That actually makes us patriotic Americans ... the Founding Fathers said that America should not get involved in foreign entanglements.
Comment: This begs the question: what's wrong with being a Putin supporter? For a profession that's arguably one of the most hated among ordinary people (for obvious reasons -- politicians are almost all power-hungry, greedy liars), Putin has shown himself to be an effective, conscientious leader, probably the best on the global market today. Sure, he is not perfect, and when he does something wrong, he should be called on it. But there's no rule saying that giving one's support to a politician means that one supports everything he or she ever does. Nor that one cannot support a politician in a different country than that in which one has had the accident of being born in. That's black-and-white thinking.