Controversy has been manufactured here in the USA in the case of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The angry MAGA minority has declared itself firmly on the side of no aid to Ukraine and full support, mainly by silence on the matter, for Putin. The vast majority of Americans favor continued aid to embattled Ukraine, an underdog democracy battling a much larger authoritarian invader. Presenting both sides of this fake controversy gives us an opportunity to see how strong a purely emotional story is, and how resistant to Reason, facts and cause and effect the right emotional appeal is.

The case for Putin’s invasion. He has every right to take back territory that he claims is historically his, because — history! As for the claimed lack of a casus belli, Russia’s indiscriminate killing of civilians, the discovery of mass graves, the mistreatment, torture and murder of prisoners of war — it’s war! War is hell. To pretend otherwise is to be a libtard cuck. From an American point of view, why should we spend money we need here to help one side in a war that has nothing to do with us?

For Ukraine — the country was invaded by a foreign power in a war of aggression. Ukraine committed no act to provoke this foreign power, other than resisting that foreign power’s political efforts to overthrow its government, and make it a satellite of Russia as it had been at times in the past. Ukraine is a democracy defending itself against the aggression of a neighboring dictator, one who routinely kills his political opponents in a political system he controls in the manner of an iron-willed Stalin, Mao or Hitler. Putin is using this war against Ukraine to press his larger territorial ambitions, and assert his right to conquer other countries, as countless megalomaniacal conquerors have done in the course of brutal human history. A Putin victory in Ukraine would be a major blow to the safety of the other surrounding NATO countries. NATO has largely kept the peace in Europe since the end of World War II.

Which side you take will be determined largely by the color of the baseball cap you wear to political rallies. For those in red caps, the fact that no chargeable criminal conspiracy was found between Putin and Trump‘s 2016 presidential campaign, in spite of 140 documented instances of coordination between them, in spite of Trump’s pro bono then-campaign manager’s years working for ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanokovitch (who fled Ukraine for refuge in Russia after being overthrown for corruption by pro-democracy, Ukrainians), in spite of proven coordination between Trump’s former campaign manager and Russian agents, and the exchange of sensitive polling data for the states Trump later narrowly won, in spite of Russia’s massive social media interference and successful hacks of voting systems (though no votes were changed this time), in spite of Trump having a Russians only meeting in the Oval Office immediately after his firing of James Comey for publicly speaking of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia, and Trump destroying all notes of his one on one meeting with Putin in Helsinki, proves that “Russia-gate” was a complete and total hoax, political hit job and classic witch hunt and that there is nothing wrong with Putin or his methods.

For everybody else,  Ukraine was illegally invaded by a relentless force that also meddles in American elections, as set forth in detail in the Republican controlled Senate investigative report on Putin-related irregularities in the 2016 election, written in response to the Mueller Report.  Most Americans, and even a majority of Republicans in Congress, it appears, believe that Ukraine needs and deserves the support of every other democracy in a position to help. The sole argument for denying the support is iron-willed Trump’s unwavering loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

People sometimes give me crap for comparing MAGA to the Nazis. For me, the main point of comparison is that the most illogical argument you could possibly make is good enough for these folks if it rings the bell that stirs their lowest impulses and makes them angry as hell. Once a mass of people is enraged, and that rage can be stoked at will, and they are following an implacable, emotionally infallible leader, they can be convinced to do anything, and they feel right and just and perfect doing whatever is asked of them. Many of them will feel this way even after the wars and mass destruction their leader causes, when history writes the damning verdict on their unfathomable indecency and their willful inability to see what was directly in front of their lying eyes the whole time.