I said that he MAY be quite a decent man, as I didn't want to commit myself too firmly on his moral worthiness. It is not easy to give a precise judgement about this unless you know the individual on a personal level.

Agreed. My main point is that regardless of what type of person he was prior to gaining this position, I greatly question how long he will remain ethical, let alone heroic, now that he is part of the global ruling order and having more and more money thrown at him all the time. Tom, as you can see, does not want to consider this, and insists that Zelensky can remain unchanged as a person and remain committed to the betterment of the Ukrainian people as his main goal. But what evidence do we see of this? How often do, for instance, American progressives remain that way once becoming part of the Democratic Party? Remember what happened to the Justice Democrats? What is the typical ruler of any nation loyal to above all else? Certainly not to the common people of their nation or any other nation based on the type of policies they typically pass, including Zelensky going along with the USA to poke the Great Bear and bring all this shit down on his country and actually create the possibility of a nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia.

What is even more disturbing is to see so many people, including Tom (who is one of my heroes despite the fact that we do not always get on well), rationalizing censorship of the media by the state or the corporations that own it, incorporating actual Neo-Nazis into their militia, taking harsh measures against common Russian people simply for being Russian, and ignoring the factors that provoked Putin into taking this mad course such as threatening to put hostile weapons right at his doorstep. What war does to us as people on an emotional level and how it makes us so quick to compromise some of our most cherished principles and slide into mindless tribalism is one of the worst aspects of it, something we too often overlook. And I'm supposed to think that maybe, just maybe, Zelensky isn't being morally compromised by his position as a head of state and by this situation? You can't imagine how disappointed I was in Tom to see him fall for all of this just as Griffith on this board was so disappointed to see me...um, not fall for it, I guess?

The important thing, which we both agree on, is that he should end the Ukrainian resistance and broadly accede to Russian demands. But I fear he will not do this until Ukraine has been half-obliterated.

Or until the USA government and the corporations this war is creating heaps of profit for give him permission to stop provoking Russia and simply accede to what are not unreasonable demands from Putin to get him to stop this shit. One of the worst parts of this whole thing, related to what I said above, is how so many people are pretending that the USA and NATO have nothing whatever to do with this, and Putin decided to invade Ukraine just because he is a dictator (which he is) and that is what dictators do whenever they get the whim. Then there is the matter of these economic sanctions on Russia that are going to hurt the common people there, not Putin and his cronies in government.

Then there is the other matter of Russia being the main exporter of fertilizer and a major exporter of fuel, which is going to cause a shortage of food in North America (at least), a huge upsurge in food prices, and a huge upsurge in already high gasoline prices. I guess I'm supposed to believe that Biden is likewise a nice person and a hero deeply concerned about the American and Ukrainian people for continuing to antagonize Russia? I'm supposed to consider the fact that he is a multi-billionaire (no possible hyperbole in this case!) with his personal fortune knee-deep in the "defense" industry is not supposed to suggest that his values and attitudes towards those at the bottom of the ant hill are anything less than nurturing? There are far too many people homeless and without enough food in the richest nation in the world, let alone a world approaching the precipice of nuclear war, for me to possibly believe that.