For me, despite the appalling cost in lives that is occurring in Ukraine, the key element here is the fact the US Republican Party has become an overtly neo-fascist organization, happy to break any and all laws and social norms if it appears to lead to the illusion of power. And at least 74 million US citizens are eager to support fascism in the USA because they imagine this to be the "patriotic" thing to do. People forget Hitler was democratically elected and that his ascent to power is mirrored in many ways by today's US political scene. Yet hardly anything is being written about this, and the poor dupes who reliably vote Republican almost certainly fail to grasp that they are voting for what will ultimately become a totalitarian regime.

I continue to be struck by the way Republican information warfare mimics Russian information warfare almost exactly in every significant detail - and again, few write about this. No doubt historians writing centuries from now - should our species manage somehow to cling on that long - will have all manner of "explanations' for this state of affairs, but the clearest explanation I can find is that a great many people are basically too ignorant and too stupid ever to realize they're just being played for the benefit of a few cynical power-hungry opportunists.

It has ever been thus.