One of the biggest problems with politics — a problem that makes it impossible to have any substantive debate or have any chance of achieving actual progress — is our society’s relentless low-IQ obsession with diluting everything down to a Hollywood-style battle between a hero and a villain.

No matter the complexity, nuance or context, every issue is presented as a binary choice between yes and no, good and evil, order and chaos. We are a nation of team sports, and if you are on the red team, you must cheer for the red team, and if you are on the blue team, you must cheer for the blue team.

Not only must you cheer for your team, but you must also loudly boo the other team.

And who determines team membership? Team captains motivated by one thing alone: holding onto their captaincy.

This has resulted in what should be laughably neck-breaking pivots of ideology that don’t even seem to cause people a moment’s hesitation. One obvious example? The MAGA movement’s declaration that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a left-wing pro-abortion anti-gun environmentalist lunatic who threatens our physical safety … until Donald Trump changed his mind and made him his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Suddenly, RFK Jr. is just the best, and if you disagree, you’re a RINO who hates America.

Team sports, ladies and gentlemen.

But while politics is the most unathletic team sport out there, the issues with which our politicians grapple are not team sports. Unfortunately, the Biden and Trump administrations’ attitudes toward Ukraine and Russia suggest otherwise.

The Biden administration’s policy toward Ukraine was one of drooling support — even worship. Ukrainian flags were on full display like every day was Ukrainian 4th of July; Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was celebrated like he was a mixture of Barack Obama, Greta Thunberg and Beyonce; and Biden’s already-frail wrist was ground to dust as he signed countless blank checks that were sent to Ukraine in the form of weaponry, supplies and cold hard cash.

And yes, this was a bad policy.

But does that justify the Trump administration’s team sports approach, which blames Ukraine for being invaded by Russia and casts Zelenskyy as an unelected dictatorial villain and Vladimir Putin as the hero?

Absolutely not.

Ukraine “should have never started it,” Trump declared last week.

What?

Again, the Biden administration’s policy toward Ukraine was horrific, and not only wasted funds we simply do not have but wasted them in a way that did not further American interests or help prevent or end what is the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

And it’s also correct to argue that Ukraine should not be a member of NATO and that the continued and entirely avoidable encroachment along Russia’s massive western border made war far more likely.

But none of that excuses Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or, worse, means that Ukraine is to blame for being invaded in the first place!

All of this is built on an illogical foundation of Orwellian sand, fueled by a crowd of supposedly anti-war hacks who lavish Putin — a warmonger — with the same adoration given to a pop star by a gaggle of teenage girls with daddy issues.

It should be simple: Just because you don’t want to fund Ukraine doesn’t mean you have to jump in bed with its attacker.

And even if you do think Ukraine is the bad guy for daring to defend itself against a years-long military onslaught, why does that make Russia the good guy?

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