I'm not saying diplomatic realism is useless, or that countries shouldn't act strategically to further their own interests. I'm saying that you have to balance those needs against the very basic moral standards that are hardwired into (almost) all of us. I'm not talking about hypocrisy, but about the basal revulsion all decent people should feel in seeing hospitals bombed and innocents massacred.

Yanukovich was caught rigging an election in 2004. He got caught and lost the subsequent clean version. He then had the gall to run again years later (with loads of support from Putin), somehow managed to win, immediately threw a bunch of the old leadership in prison, and then set about breaking the promises that got him elected. That's why he got run out of office, and the fact that he fled to Russia when things got hot is very telling. The US had nothing to do with any of this. _Of course_ we were cheering for the people of Ukraine. Of course we were excited to see a people we viewed as long-suffering fighting so hard for their freedom. But Putin drove them away on his own, and Americans have no particular interest in Ukraine (or Russia, for that matter) that goes beyond wanting to see the world be a peaceful place that's conducive to free trade. And fwiw, the length of a Wikipedia page likely has a lot more to do with the community's level of interest in a given topic than it does the level of State Department complicity in that topic. :)

I was imprecise with my wording. The population of the USSR, as I understand it, was pretty deliberately shifted around in the 20th century to prevent uprisings, and I'm sure the former Soviet ethnicities themselves aren't segregated. But I have friends of color—people who obviously are not from the area—who _have_ been to Moscow and say it was uncomfortable in ways that nowhere else in Europe had been. Anyway, my point was more that you don't see Russia accepting refugees from the Middle East or anywhere similar: the country exists entirely on the supply side of the migrant crisis.

The situation in the South China Sea is complicated. I'm not going to pretend it's my area of expertise. That said, the Western agenda there is to ensure freedom of navigation for everybody, and prevent China from seizing one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. I'd also point out that no one has invaded anyone else (with the arguable exception of the Chinese dredging operations that sparked this whole controversy to begin with).

I agree completely that when you can't question the truth, it's time to get suspicious. That's exactly the point I was trying to make about the recent Russian media blackout. People outside of Russia have access to all kinds of information about the war, including official Kremlin statements. The Western media report on what Putin's spokespeople are saying. It's just that it usually turns out to be demonstrably false. The Biden administration, on the other hand, announced the invasion days before it happened. I don't trust them because they're my government; I trust them because they accurately predicted the invasion and because the reporting on the ground continues to corroborate what they're claiming.

I think I do a pretty good job of listening to other perspectives. I even watched a few autotranslated segments of Russia-1 before YouTube blocked it. (Olga Skabeyeva is freaking terrifying!) But how many times do you have to be lied to by somebody before you stop trusting them?