Ukraine is a victim of an aging dictator that lost his marbles. A dictator that accomplished his goals within Russia without any opposition, got bored, and deci

Ukraine is a victim of an aging dictator that lost his marbles. A dictator that accomplished his goals within Russia without any opposition, got bored, and decided to play a rather bloody chess game geopolitically. That said, it started with Putin gradually eliminating opposition, controlling mainstream media and blocking non-mainstream ones, beating down all organizations that had organized people working together and expressing alternative opinion (religious organizations, trucker unions, heritage funds). The West is currently about 1-1.5 decades behind. We are silencing fringe voices instead of reasoning with them. We are canceling dissidents instead of tolerating them. We let a handful of people with their own interests decide what is "information" and what is "misinformation". If we let this process continue, it will inevitably follow the Russian curve. The mechanics here is very simple: once you create a position of power that decides what is right and what is wrong, the person occupying this position will seek more rights and wrongs simply to justify their existence. And others will join that cause for the sake of promotion/influence. Such structures only fall in a larger turmoil (bankruptcy of a company, fall of the government, etc) that inevitably brings a lot of destruction.