Sanctioned Moral Arrogance Does Not Help Ukrainians. It Does Help the Western Power Elite.

There sure have been a lot of tweets and Facebook posts lately by people with a trendy new avatar that looks something like this:

I’ve had a real Ukrainian flag, often flying from my front stoop, for several years now. My wife and I are into genealogy; her great-grandmother came to Ohio from what was then known as Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire back in 1913, and we established contact with some distant Ukrainian cousins of hers in Lwow many years ago. I’ve always been into flags, and have about 20 of the things, many of which are the flags of our many mother countries if one goes back far enough, from Denmark to Quebec to Ireland to Ukraine.

IOW, Ukraine and Ukrainians are very real to us. They are not just the current, faddish, worthy victims to be supported while other victims of other imperialisms, such as the Syrians or Libyans or Yemenis or Afghans or Iraqis or (insert nationality of unworthy victim here) are not to be mentioned unless one wants to face the morally arrogant charge of whataboutism from some sanctimonious idiot sucking up approved war porn.

I find it ironic, and repugnant, that so many Americans who couldn’t find Ukraine on a globe a month ago are now dislocating their arms patting themselves on their backs because they changed their avatar to a Ukrainian flag, just like many had Black Lives Matter signs in their yards when that now forgotten cause was considered worthy of promotion by the liberal elites, or who posted pictures of themselves wearing masks and bragging about how they weren’t doing that for their own safety, oh no, but because they cared so much about others. Barf.

And then condemned small business people protesting their livelihoods being destroyed by lockdowns for being selfish right-wingers. And then condemned truckers who only wanted an end to Covid mandates that were economically hurting them for being Nazis, and now support a regime that would not exist without the support of actual Nazis like it’s some sacred bastion of freedom and democracy.

What’s going on here? I’m going to call it sanctioned moral arrogance. When one is sanctimoniously morally arrogant, one feels morally self-satisfied by condemning those who don’t live up to one’s righteous moral standards, which are sanctioned by what one considers a righteous authority. That authority can be a government, a political party, a political group, a religion, or even a trusted media source.

The recently condemned include those who questioned what the government was saying about a disease and how best to respond to it, or the rationale for invading another country that never attacked us (example: the Afghan and Iraq Wars), or who now condemn allied governments for practicing genocide(see the Saudis and UAE in Yemen), or express understanding for why a rival government would feel that its neighbor joining an American-dominated alliance is an existential threat.

In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky talked about worthy victims and unworthy victims, depending on who is manufacturing the narrative. Palestinians, Yemenis, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Africans in general, Vietnamese, and many others have had their turn at being unworthy victims of the imperial American narrative.

OTOH, Taiwanese, Tibetans, Uighurs, East Germans escaping to the West, Israeli victims of terrorist attacks, and now Ukrainians are worthy victims. They are to be held up as brave, freedom-loving people who Must Be Supported, whereas the others are at best just necessary victims of the Way Things Are. Sorry, nothing personal, but we cannot feel for you because it is inconvenient for us now, and thinking about you makes us uncomfortable. Maybe some day. Kumbaya, y’all!

The enemies of the worthy victims are to be wholly vilified. The oppressive, ruthless Communist Chinese. The Islamic terrorists. The Russian imperialists. Those Americans and other Westerners who don’t go along with the narrative have been or are called pinkos, traitors, Commies, Russian shills, Chinese puppets, anti-Semitic, racists, misogynists, or Other Bad People.

Morally arrogant people can post and tweet and say the most vicious things to others and feel good about themselves because their cause is just, even if only for a few moments at a time, and because it is the thought that counts, never the actual outcome for even the worthy victims. That doesn’t matter, for after one morally sanctioned cause fades away, the imperial and kleptocratic narrative will always find another. Meanwhile, all of the underlying problems of a declining Empire go unaddressed and unthought of, while the Western power elite enjoys more time being the power elite.

Pretty neat if you’re one of the power elite.

I am not. Neither are the Ukrainian people. What would help the Ukrainian people the most right now would be an end to the fighting. An end to the fighting won’t happen until the Russian government is convinced that there is at least some hope of having what they believe to be legitimate security concerns addressed.

Do you want to see the Russo-Ukrainian War end soon? I do.

It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what I think. What the Russians think does matter, and it’s not even difficult to understand why they feel as they do if one has even the most basic understanding of their long, rich, and often tragic history. Or even just their history since 1991.

Naturally, what the Ukrainians think also matters, since they’re the ones who are actually living in or fleeing from the war zone. They also have legitimate security concerns that are easily understood if one understands their history, which is as inseparably connected to that of Russia as it is to the European neighbors to their west.

I don’t know exactly what a stable peace between Russia and Ukraine would look like, but I do know that both Russian and Ukrainian existential security needs must be addressed. Ukraine cannot be part of an alliance overtly hostile to Russia. At the same time, Ukraine’s independence and security from Russia must also be assured.

I don’t think these two goals are mutually exclusive. There is a way forward, but no one will help find it by casting one side or the other as having a monopoly on moral sanctity, or calling those who object to the Western imperial narrative insulting names.

We Americans need to understand and cooperate with the Russians, and the Chinese and Europeans and many others for that matter, if our civilization is to survive. They need us just as much. People need to remember that if we are to make this world a better place than the perverse one it is now. Sanctioned moral arrogance is petty, servile, ignorant, fleeting, and serves no useful purpose to anyone who actually cares about improving the human condition in general or in ending the Russo-Ukrainian War in particular.

It does serve those who are profiting from imperialism and war.

Thank you for reading. Good night, and good luck.