Surely the reason why appeasement isn't working is that we just haven't appeased hard enough!
"Both sides" / "tribes bad" / "transcend the conflict" discourse is such cancer, because intentionally ignoring the most pertinent parameters of a conflict is not a neutral choice. When Donald Trump said he would end the Russia/Ukraine conflict on Day 1, we didn't fear that he was lying, we feared that he was serious because we all knew that the only way to actually do it would have been to force Ukrainian defeat. When your toddler is screaming because the smell of cooking has made him hungry but he has to wait, giving in to his demands is not conflict-transcending 3D chess, it's teaching your kid that tantrums are an effective tool. The same goes for politics.
"Both sides" / "tribes bad" / "transcend the conflict" discourse is such cancer, because intentionally ignoring the most pertinent parameters of a conflict is not a neutral choice. When Donald Trump said he would end the Russia/Ukraine conflict on Day 1, we didn't fear that he was lying, we feared that he was serious because we all knew that the only way to actually do it would have been to force Ukrainian defeat. When your toddler is screaming because the smell of cooking has made him hungry but he has to wait, giving in to his demands is not conflict-transcending 3D chess, it's teaching your kid that tantrums are an effective tool. The same goes for politics.