Thanks for not bailing out this time RL on the Ukraine-ussia issue - glad your interest in Gen Flynn brought you in. Else I would never have seen the great links you provided.
With regards to your statement ... “In that manachean calculus, if you are a critic either for or against action in Ukraine, you are stuck into one of the two boxes: You are either a “Putinista” or a “Ukrainian Propaganda Monkey” and there is no other category you can be placed in.”
Yes, it ends all discussion (in some cases this is intentional), brings forth emotional investment into one’s need to be right and in control, and pits people against each other. Such simplified categorization prevents a search for and acquisition of knowledge and truth. Once recognized however, one knows whom to avoid and why.
Nailed it, you did.
I understand people are emotionally invested in this. I am too, and I am an emotional person, that is, when I get angry, my emotions can take control of me in the short term.
I fight it, but even at my age, it still does that.
But in something that could lead to a larger and more terrible conflict, we owe it to ourselves to try harder to bring it to the table.