There are a few things going on here, we'll have more after the jump.
From The Conversation, October 17:
Chris HannEmeritus Director, Max Planck Institute
for Social Anthropology
Consumers of western media could be forgiven for supposing that Ukraine, the state whose sovereignty was violated so brutally with the Russian invasion of February 2022, enjoys unstinting support from its western neighbour Poland. The support of the Polish government has been unambiguous. Donations of military equipment and humanitarian support for refugees have been second to none in Europe.
The election of a new government at the end of 2023 made no discernible difference to the Polish commitment. Antipathy towards Russia in Poland has strong roots, dating back even before the days when much of the country (including Warsaw) was formally incorporated into the Romanovs’ Russian empire.
Observers in the west take it for granted that the pro-Ukrainian policies of successive Polish governments – endorsed by the Catholic churches – reflect views shared by citizens throughout the country.
But after more than two years of war, as I found during a recent research trip, doubts are being voiced in some segments of society.
Farmers have been angry for years. Ukraine has rich soils and its agribusiness is free from EU regulations. In the exceptional conditions created by the invasion, with the government desperately in need of revenue, Ukraine has been allowed to export its cheap grain to the EU. This has undermined the market for Polish farmers. Some Poles event believe that, since much Ukrainian farmland is owned by foreign capital, the prolongation of the war has been orchestrated by the west for economic reasons.
Similar arguments can be heard concerning energy. The end of cheap gas from the Russian Federation promises a bonanza for the producers of alternative supplies, notably in the United States at the expense of higher prices for Polish households. I also heard in plenty of conversations that Poland is the only ally of Ukraine to provide military hardware free of charge – whereas other Nato states insist on full payment or offer credits that will theoretically have to be repaid one day.
The resentments run deep and they affect large sections of the population. Why do I have to wait months for my hospital appointment, people ask – is it because of increased demand for health services from the millions of Ukrainian refugees? Why should my taxes pay for generous financial grants to Ukrainians who turn up at the border, claim the cash, and promptly return home?
A tangled history
Most educated citizens dismiss such allegations with scorn. Those who complain and exaggerate isolated abuses are often written off as gullible victims of Russian propaganda. But Poles are unlikely dupes. Monuments to communist crimes are everywhere – above all the Katyń massacres of 1940, when the Soviet security forces murdered thousands of Polish officers. More recently, many Poles still suspect the Kremlin’s complicity in the plane crash that killed their then president, Lech Kaczyński in Smolensk in 2010.Yet hatred of Russia does not translate into unconditional support for Ukraine....
...MUCH MORE
He hits most of the reasons for the declining enthusiasm including the Ukrainian depravity in Galicia and Volhynia during World War II - imagine what Hamas did on October 7, 2023, the gang rapes, torture, mass murders but on a scale seventy times larger.
One point Hann did not address is known by every community organizer from Barack Obama on down,—The Issue Attention Cycle. You've noticed fewer and fewer Ukrainian flags on Twitter? It's a problem that pressure groups have had to confront forever. From August 2021's "Jamie Powell, Winston Churchill, and Anthony Downs On A Variant Of Semantic Satiation":
....Which of course reminded me of something, in this case Churchill's comment that "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Which led to the memory of Anthony Downs’ groundbreaking 1972 paper on communicating in general and issue-oriented communication in particular: "Up and Down with Ecology: The 'Issue-Attention' Cycle"
"American public attention rarely remains sharply focused upon any one domestic issue for very long - even if it involves a continuing problem of crucial importance to society. Instead, a systematic 'issue-attention cycle' seems strongly to influence public attitudes and behavior concerning most key domestic problems. Each of these problems suddenly leaps into prominence, remains there for a short time, and then -- though still largely unresolved -- gradually fades from the center of public attention. A study of the way this cycle operates provides in-sights into whether public attention is likely to remain sufficiently focused upon any given issue to generate enough political pressure to cause effective change"
- Pre-problem : A problem exists, but only some experts and interest groups are alarmed.
- Discovery and Enthusiasm : There is alarm and concern over a discovered environmental problem. People band together to support a solution and attack the problem.
- Realization : The public starts to understand the cost and difficulty of making progress on the issue.
- Decline in Interest : Because of this realization, there is a decline in public interest (and therefore media attention).
- Post-problem : The issue isn’t resolved but there is less attention on it. However, the overall level of interest is higher than when the problem was discovered. This may result in small recurrences of interest.”
....MUCH MORE
And the original meaning of 'semantic satiation'?
Semantic satiation is a phenomenon whereby the uninterrupted repetition of a word eventually leads to a sense that the word has lost its meaning. This effect is also known as semantic saturation or verbal satiation.
The concept of semantic satiation was described by E. Severance and M.F. Washburn in The American Journal of Psychology in 1907. The term was introduced by psychologists Leon James and Wallace E. Lambert in the article "Semantic Satiation Among Bilinguals" in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (1961)....MORE at ThoughtCo
So two rules: 1) Don't bore your audience; 2) Don't drone on and on to the point that people no longer hear or care what you are trying to express.
There are very few exceptions to the rules, perhaps just salmon and Svalbard.