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It's always extremely easy to be intellectually lazy and unconsciously fall victim to propaganda. Britain and the US invented the modern public relations and propaganda industry and have been very successful at convincing the average person who had never even heard of places like Donetsk and Luhansk up until a few years ago, that they're on the right side of an issue they know nothing about.
I remember awhile ago getting into a debate with someone in the /r/geopolitics subreddit, who literally said to me that if Russia only spent more money on it's domestic social programs to take care of its people, NATO wouldn't expand into Ukraine. And that is not hyperbole. This is the quality and caliber of the average person who takes great pride in having very strong opinions about something they know absolutely nothing about. Americans in general are not very good when it comes to putting themselves in the shoes of other people, and when you combine that with someone who mistakes the philosophy subreddit for the geopolitics one when it comes to understanding international affairs, riding a bike on the highway isn't your only problem when you're also going the wrong direction.
If you don't understand what's really going on, then you can't even represent the other accurately enough to have a sensible disagreement with it.
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