Western leaders using "Never Again" Holocaust messaging to justify a ongoing genocide, becoming the equivalent of the Nazi-appeasers before/during WW2 upon who we look back on with such disgust (ignoring that leaders like Churchill were relatively pro-Nazi before it all kicked off, of course) would have shattered my previous liberal brain into a trillion pieces. The whiplash we've experienced in such a relatively short time (over the last 3-4 years or so) between:

1. the coronavirus pandemic telling us that we're all ultimately disposable and that over a million people can and should die, shoveled like coal chunks into the furnace of the economy, then

2. the war in Ukraine telling us that actually, people are worth things again, human life is precious and Russia is bad for destroying it, and we must arm Nazis, then

3. the Canada Hunka incident telling us that murderers who freely volunteered to commit atrocities against Jews and Roma and other groups is actually complicated and those anti-semitic genocidal atrocities could even be justified because of how bad the USSR was, so human life isn't actually precious anymore, then

4. the Gaza genocide telling us that, actually, any Jewish person being killed even if they're the equivalent of concentration camp guards is an unspeakable atrocity and resistance is unjustifiable if there's any violence involved, "they go low, we go high" but also we love Israel anyway so we don't even really think they're going low

From a non-racist liberal point of view (as in, they're still racist but don't think saying slurs is good, etc), this all must seem totally bonkers at least on a subconscious level. All liberal values seem to be currently in this violent political vortex, where sometimes a statement like "killing ethnic minorities is complicated" is not only true in one case (Ukrainian Nazis killing civilians in WW2, killing Palestinians in Gaza, etc) and false in another (Jewish settlers in Israel, who obviously aren't a minority in Israel but are on a global scale; the "Ughyur genocide", etc), but true and false for the exact same conflict. The only way to come out of this chaos with even a vaguely coherent political ideology is to either become a socialist or become an all-out racist and apologist/supporter of imperialism - and we're watching many people become the latter. Otherwise, you're just watching the news on the TV or your phone or your computer with a slack-jawed face while the words enter your brain without the slighest post-processing and then go about your day not ever thinking about how like, Russia killing 500 children in ~2 years is intentional, planned genocide but Israel killing over 4000 in a month is just an unfortunate Thing That Happened.

I don't think that people who do genuinely believe in the rules-based international order ("Yeah, the United States should try and maintain justice and order around the world, we can't let evil forces try and disrupt how great things are for everybody, sucks about the bad side effects but it's better than if Russia or China were in charge, can you imagine?") are like, having mental breakdowns or crises of faith about their ideology or anything, at least partially because they don't even think they have an ideology in which to have a crisis about, but it does express itself in a general kind of malaise or alienation about the world and general events or even everyday life. "There's a sense in which things kinda suck, but maybe it's just because I didn't meditate this morning or take my multivitamin or that my co-worker was being annoying or something, IDK." At least, this is what I observe in my friends and family.

The contradictions have accelerated so rapidly in just a short amount of time that I literally cannot imagine where we'll be in, say, 2030.