How Russia/Putin really feels about Nazis

[Igel]

9. There are never "good guys" making up either side.

That's sort of a problem, because then the "good side" is always the "side that serves my ends right now." You ignore problems in your clan that are odious in the other camp.

"The worst of my tribe is better than the best in your tribe." I've heard it said in other words by Democrats and by Republicans, by progressives and conservatives, by Americans and Canadians and Muslims and both tolerant and hateful fundies.

One of the "tricks" to put that into practice is to require that the other side be perfect. You forgive faults among allies; you exaggerate faults among enemies. Love is blind, and none is blinder than self-love, which usually extends to those that you think are like you. It makes demanding blind allegiance and purity purges obligatory. It's the flip side of "haters gonna hate."

It's a motivation for those who really side against the US to justify their position. The US isn't perfect. So they side with the other side--at least "I choose neither side" lacks that rather large ladle-full of hypocrisy.

However, not choosing over something that carries a rather large moral risk--whether it's Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, or Ukraine--doesn't mean that there's no moral taint in not choosing. It just makes it no longer a potential sin of commission but a sin of omission. Letting the genocide occur in Rwanda was a sin of omission, if you want to use those terms. Not having a stand on apartheid in S. Africa was also a sin of omission. The moral taint is directly proportional to the ability to intervene and stop the problem, in saying "better that 10 000 of their kind die to save 10 of my kind."

This is an extreme stance against chauvinism and jingoism. Which is exactly what many say: "Help our own to be more well off before saving the lives of others. I don't want my kids to fight for others against oppression." Where would the US be with that kind of attitude? No abolitionism. No "march for freedom" and having civil rights workers travel to the South in the '60s to agitate for civil rights.