Original photo: Ukrainians and Israelis who support them gather during a protest against Russian attacks on Ukraine, on Feb. 26, 2022, in Tel Aviv. Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency.

Excuse me if I’m annoyed and seemingly jumping around topically today, but I’m kind of fed up with American exceptionalism (exceptional stupidity).

I’ll get to Ukraine in a second, because I’m addicted to the world’s greatest social media destination (Nextdoor), which makes me feel the heartbeat of everyday Americans (and also feel morally superior).

While the rest of us watched Russia launch this century’s biggest bullshit bully move this week, rolling tanks into Ukraine under missiles flying into apartment buildings full of poor people, an important argument was brewing on Nextdoor: “CCHS is corrupt,” a person with world class perspective wrote this week. “Masks on kids is child abuse.”

Yes. Even as large-scale war hits Europe for the first time in 77 years, and Bay Area counties are actually lifting COVID-19 restrictions, we’re still doing the mask thing.

I’m sure many neighbors who were child abuse victims read that and thought “Why yes, that’s exactly what child abuse was like.”

I hear this stuff all the time in my day job. It’s stunning in its lack of perspective, especially during a time when people are being killed and their country destroyed on TV news for no reason at all.

CCHS, I assume, is Contra Costa Health Services, where underpaid public servants spent the past two years working atop a balance ball every day while juggling pandemic chainsaws from the state government, Federal government, real media, Fox News and social media yoo-hoos.

If these overworked people at CCHS – and every health agency across the world – have any extra time, they squeeze in worrying about the same things we do: our kids getting COVID and not going (or going) to school, paying bills, being good enough at pickleball to fit in with the neighbors, etc.

It must be great spending all those years of working your ass off in college and taking a job that’s all about trying to keep the public healthy, only to have the public call you “corrupt,” not long after many of these know-nothings voted for Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi POTUS (thank you Stephen Colbert) to remain in the White House.

Remember him? The one who got impeached for trying to withhold aid to Ukraine unless they manufactured evidence to get him elected.

If wearing masks is child abuse, my daughters must be tougher than hell. Because they do, every day, voluntarily, at school and work, without a peep of protest. Hey … remember when Republicans used to call people “snowflakes?”

I was already fed up with people blaming Joe Biden for pulling out the last of his hair (seriously, I think he did; it’s not looking good at all) while trying to stop Russia from invading Ukraine. Then they blamed him for not doing more, without acknowledging that, clearly, doing more could jumpstart World War III.

Some Americans pumped their fists when the Florida orange called Vladimir Putin’s new real estate acquisition “genius” (seriously, that’s the criteria in which he judges everything, as land acquisitions, in the most non-humanistic, sociopathic, power-hungry framework possible. That may be why he hero-worships dictators). He literally said, as an American president, a Russian dictator was more believable than U.S. intelligence.

Now, in a Twilight Zone twist, Trump supporters are openly supporting Russia invading a sovereign and democratic European nation, that has been fighting for that democracy for 30 years.

I wonder what Republican patron saint Ronald Reagan would say about that.

It’s also annoying this deadly cruel abuse of a population happens all over the world, but we seem to only care when it’s white people getting abused and killed. Not that Ukraine doesn’t deserve the sympathy. I’m guilty as well. I’m white, my family is from Europe, my grandfather fought in World War II. I admit to being particularly Eurocentric in my emotions over this happening in NATO’s backyard.

So I guess I’m annoying, too.

It’s also bothersome that much of the developed world economy will benefit from this, just like every war. (See my colleague Danny’s excellent take on this). It was a Republican, President Eisenhower, who, during his presidential exit speech in 1961, said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

It has. With all our tech advancements 61 years later, we still haven’t figured out how to make peace somehow as profitable as war for so many.

Or make more people see things with some real-world perspective. Hopefully it won’t take another world war.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.