“Human skin,” Catherine the Great once observed, “is more ticklish than paper.” I wonder if the people beating the drum to escalate the war in Ukraine have taken that homely wisdom on board. I suspect that the American people writ large are beginning to. A year ago, soon after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, I saw the beautiful people in my deep blue town, the ones who had posted “Black Lives Matter” signs on their front lawn, substitute (or, if they were really gung-ho, add) a Ukraine flag on the poles they had erected to declare their higher virtue.
Those Ukrainian flags, I’ve noticed,
are beginning to come down. Why? In part because of simple economic
self-interest. People—the ones not part of the government or its
auxiliaries, anyway—understand that the sanctions “against Russia” are
just as much sanctions against us. Ordinary people look at the price of
gasoline and heating oil and think, “Why should I be paying for this?” .........To Read More....
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