Frankly, it is very odd in my long life to find I am talking and writing, in defense of supporting the Ukrainian efforts to defend themselves, seemingly allied with Biden and the "progressive" Left!?
Yeah, I hear you. One of the things I like about living in East Texas is that the folks around here are old-school Republicans who can't stand Moscow. I had a customer walk into my bookstore yesterday with a GOP elephant on it in Ukrainian blue and gold, with a caption that said "Proud 2nd Amendment supporter. Ukrainians need guns in case the Russians come. I need mine in case a Democrat comes."
But I digress.
As for the feeling of gritting your teeth when you look around and realize the ones standing with you are the Leftists (a feeling I also understand), think of WW2. The Communists were no friends of ours but for the moment we had the same enemy they did. Though with the GOP making their "we're tired of supporting Ukraine" message more and more central to their platform with every passing day, the revolting reality is that 2024 may end up being the first time since 2004 that I've been disgusted enough with the Republicans to actually vote for a Democrat.
Regarding the saying "live free or die," here's the thing: most of the anti-establishment crowd thinks this is what they're actually doing. All they see is "the establishment is pro-Ukraine so I am against it." If "the establishment" ran a PSA saying "air is good," most of this lot would suffocate themselves to show how "red-pilled" they are. Which actually leads into the article I'm working on, but that's a story for another day.