@p
>-I don't know where the timeline of events you are referring to would start or what the scope would be; it sounds like it could be a lot of effort for something that would not be actionable, even if we were to acquire perfect knowledge of it.

To me this is multiple things: a chance for me to learn something from you, a potentially entertaining in-depth discussion about history/politics, a chance for me to better understand my own beliefs and refine them, and lastly a chance to convince you of a few things I think we differ on that I am moderately confident I can prove my case about. If you merely see me as a Mormon knocking on your door advocating for my religion, know that I am not even saying what we should or should not do in regards to Ukraine to achieve the best or least bad results.

Do you know very much about the German revolutions of 1848? My 3rd great grandfather from the Kingdom of Hanover fought for similar values as what founded The United States. He fought for his freedom, and lost. Everybody hated the king. Everybody wanted to unify Germany. But mere Liberty could not sway over those who wanted much more radical social reforms; it splintered, and it failed. You could say Classical Liberalism went to war against Proto-Communism, but they both lost, and then we got World War 1 & 2 and the Cold War.

He immigrated somewhere that shared his belief system; the United States of America. Once here he opened a small store where he made and sold furniture; my family hands down some of his works even today and I have a lot of fond memories as a kid building blanket fortresses under a wooden table he built. The Classical Liberal values he believed in failed in his homeland, but when the Civil War started only about a decade later, he'd rather die than let them fail twice. He had all of his sons fight, helped convince other German families as well to join, and partly through his and other local German's efforts Missouri was notoriously contested during the war and historians largely credit German immigrants in Missouri for why the state was so contested. Here's an interesting lecture on it: https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=y5vjbJ-9U0o

What point am I making? Well I mostly just think it is an interesting story, but there is one:

History, global events, ideology, can be just a dumb thing like sports for people to bicker over, but for others it can feel way closer to home and real. I feel like Ukrainians are just like my Great Great Great grandfather; I don't want them to have to flee their homeland to be free.

I'll say more probably on the weekend, but I just wanted to make a little progress getting over "Why even talk about it?", although I doubt I made much.