We're told we need to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to preserve western values of freedom and democracy, and in order to facilitate that aim we're getting less and less free speech. Less and less free thought. Less and less free press. Less and less democracy.

I keep thinking of the (fictional) story where Churchill is advised to cut funding for the arts to help fund the war and he says 'Then what are we fighting for?'
If we need to sacrifice everything we claim to value in order to fight for those values, what are we fighting for?

Dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. Public discourse is being more and more aggressively disrupted by the powerful. We're being shaped into the exact sort of homogeneous, power-serving, tyrannized, propagandized population our leaders criticize other nations for having.

If the powerful are becoming more tyrannical in order to fight tyranny, what's probably actually happening is that they are just tyrants doing the thing they've always wanted to do.

As westerners in 'liberal democracies' we are told that our society holds free speech, free thought and accountability for the powerful as sacrosanct.

Our leaders are showing us that this is a lie.

The problem with 'western values' is that the west doesn't value them.

In reality, those who best exemplify 'western values' are the ones who are being most aggressively silenced and marginalized by western powers. The real journalists. The dissidents. The skeptics. The peace activists. The thinkers. Those who refuse to bow down to their rulers.

If defeating autocracy requires becoming an autocracy, what's the point of defeating autocracy?

Exhibit 3687-B on how western powers are destroying western values in the name of preserving western values:
twitter.com/lhfang/status/…

Another. These are just examples popping up in my feed, just from today.
twitter.com/aaronjmate/sta…

twitter.com/ghostun2machin…

twitter.com/caitoz/status/…