Humanity's main coping mechanism is rallying in tribes. Those tribes are defined by the exclusion of other tribes. Our instinct is to band together with those who are like us. The grand human project is expanding the tribe large enough to include everyone and sometimes, it's one step forward, two steps back. I'm almost done with this book. Yesterday's read was all about the Italian partisans and the death of Mussolini... and that under the Fascists, anyone who wasn't a Fascist was an ally. Staunch anti-communists would join the Communists to fight because regardless of what you think of Communists, they weren't Black Shirts. Plenty of people were willing to align with Hitler over his economic ideas while completely ignoring what a rabid, apocalyptic anti-semite he was. And, of course, he was merely the most extreme. A gentle reminder: Russians are not innocent.