[Albion Wilde]

" I am baffled as to why Tucker is so relentlessly hostile to Ukraine"

You'd have to be a Conservative and an American to get it.

In most conflicts, Americans tend to polarize quickly, making one guy the "good guy" and the other guy the "bad guy." But sometimes, both are bad guys. I'm resisting the narrative and thinking that this is one of those times. Aside from the fate of innocents, I'm not sympathetic either to Ukraine or to Russia.

As for Tucker, my take is that he is less concerned about the geopolitics of this situation and more concerned about the damage to the taxpayer, the farmer, the supply chain, the consumer—all of whom will face privations because of this murky situation in which there really is no clear hero, and no definition of "freedom" that is completely legitimate.

[Rockingham]

An unpalatable and little understood truth is that America's prosperity and financial position depend on the dollar's supremacy as the world's primary trade and reserve currency, which in turn require that we maintain our superpower status. And a key aspect of that status is for the US to be the world's predominant military power with a sound national security strategy.

As to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is the greatest threat to NATO since the end of the Cold War. We may grumble that, with a few honorable exceptions, Europe does not pay its way in NATO, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine must be defeated for the sake of America's national interest. A defeat of Russia and a free and independent Ukraine as a NATO member and US ally would make clear that the US (and its dollars) continue to be the strongest power in the world.

The result would be that we can continue to finance our budget-busting Medicare and Social Security programs by borrowing instead of having to drastically and abruptly cut benefits and raise taxes. I prefer that we continue to keep our old folks in good health and enjoying their final years of life. In time, the boon of cheap financing offered by dollar supremacy will end, but it is better if that happens gradually and only after new productive technologies have made the US and world economies prosperous enough to absorb the burden without a major dislocation.

As for Tucker Carlson, I imagine that he knows little of this, which for him (and many others) makes US support for Ukraine hard to understand as beneficial, even essential to American interests. And, contrary to what is often assumed of faraway wars, there are good guys and bad guys. Here's one of the best ways to tell which is which as between Russia and Ukraine: the chronic international miscreant ruled by a corrupt thug who has invaded a neighbor, claimed slices of its territory for itself, and deliberately targeted and terrorized civilians is the bad guy.