“Throughout the war, American populists have assigned moral culpability for escalation exclusively to Ukraine and its Western supporters for resisting Russian fascism and not at all to the Russian fascists who chose to brutalize their neighbors in the first place. Yet, as perverse as that may be, there’s strategic logic to it. Postliberals in the U.S. want to normalize ruthlessness toward liberals and part of the normalization process is muddying the moral waters whenever postliberal regimes abroad behave ruthlessly.”