Ya know, the more time I’ve spent covering Putin in first the lead up to this crisis, and now the war itself, I have learned by necessity than I ever wanted to know. And in doing so, I discovered something. Putin is a lot more like Trump than you think.
We’ll start with the really obvious, stupid shit. Both Putin and Trump have extreme narcissistic personalities, they are both extreme sociopaths, and neither one takes humiliation, rejection, or loss very well. In fact they both tend to lash out.
But it goes deeper and further back than that. Trump was born rich and pampered, and could do no wrong. Which gave him a feeling of mental and moral superiority. Growing up in Soviet Russia, Putin grew up in the only world better than being rich. He grew up being KGB. And in Soviet Russia, KGB could kick rich’s ass every day of the week.
Both cut their teeth in the “business” world feeling omnipotent. Putin because he had the prestige and terror factor of the KGB behind him, ands Trump because he had Daddy, and his fortune behind him.
As a result, both of them grew and advanced by being used to making decisions, with nobody there to correct or override them.
And you know what? Both of them turned out to be dim bulbs, with room temperature IQ’s. Trump had his sister do his college homework at Wharton, and Putin was a totally political creature, making every decision with an eye towards his own advancement. And since there were no negatives, each only felt more empowered.
But unfortunately for them, whether they noticed or not, other people noticed their deficiencies. The New York elite, the tribe Trump most wanted to curry, treated him as a louche joke. As did the New York media especially the tabloid media, due to his clownish attempts to elevate his image. And Putin’s superiors noted his flaws, and put a cap on his ability to rise in the KGB, due to his basic mental instability when pressure decisions had to be made.
Both managed to reach what each thought of as a kind of mogul status, but when the heat was on, both had a nasty habit of stepping on their own cranks in the bright global spotlight. Especially after Trump became President, both men were incredibly dangerous, but most observers found them rather clownish characters, which only made them more dangerous and unstable.
Is there a lesson to be learned here? Frankly, I believe there is. Let’s look at Trump first. As obnoxious and stupid as Trump was when he was President, people in the media and the country took solace that there were adults in the room to keep him from acting out on his worst tendencies. It was only in the last 18 months of his presidency, when Trump started purging his administration of those guardrails, that people truly became alarmed. And they started congressional investigations and put up legislative guardrails to keep His Lowness in check.
True, Putin is a dictator. But don’t think for a minute that politics isn’t enmeshed in every portion of Kremlin life. Remember that Putin’s KGB superiors shackled him when it became clear that he was out more for himself than for following the mantra. There are cabinet ministers in there with fortunes and dachas to protect, and lower ministers with their very lives to protect. There are oligarchs with tens of billions of dollars to protect. And they will act to save their own skins.
As I reported earlier tonight, over the weekend Putin purged his war cabinet of more than a dozen senior military and intelligence advisors. Part of that was Putin trying to plug the leak that the CIA has in his inner circle, but I honestly believe that part of it was in order to rid himself of the adults in the room that were counseling him against his worst impulses. But now Putin has personally removed those guardrails of sanity. We’ll have to wait and see if the Russian shadow government works like the US government, and takes steps to rein in a madman. Don’t touch that dial.
The really bad part about that purge? Putin still didn’t get the leakers in all likelihood. You’d think an ex-KGB would know that it’s hardly EVER the high profile guys who are leaking details like this.
Correct analysis, Murf, but I feel a duty to warn the key difference is Trump’s a stupid sociopath, barely functional on a good day, and Putin’s an infinitely more adaptable, I’d even say highly intelligent, sociopath, as evidenced by his extreme cunning allowing him to have survived and thrived in Moscow’s snake pit of other, lesser predators as long as he has.
The inherent danger of a sociopath in the process of decompensation, however, renders any comparative value of their respective intelligences negligible: the process can be triggered by a host of either seemingly superficial or massively negative events, but in the end, these events all have the effect of reducing the sociopath’s affective global sense of themselves as invincible, bulletproof, and deathless. Whether or not any given event causes decompensation totally depends on the sociopath’s ability to seize control of objective real-time events and reshape, reshuffle or retrofit them to reflect their existentially necessary version of reality or, failing that, to obliterate the offending reality, and thus regain the world they view as legitimately, rightfully theirs—at any cost.
Trump decompensated hourly between November 2020 until the inevitable collapse, Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Putin is at the apex of his decompensation, and given his extraordinary power to do irrevocable harm—intentional, accidental or random—I cannot overstate the danger he poses to civilization. He cannot be stopped by any conventional means. He will not be contained. IMO, the last, best chance we have to head off a hot war lies with the oligarchs and bandits. They dare not let the situation they face grow any more out of their control. “Going along to get along” is a guaranteed disaster for their own interests, and they know it. Inaction spells suicide.
I just pray they act soon.
Putin is the political equivalent of an abusive spouse. Women know that the most dangerous time is when they leave because the abuser may kill them,,summed up as “If I can’t have you nobody can.” In a domestic violence situation, that is when he is most likely to.kill her.
Putin wants,Ukraine as the breadbasket of Russia. If he can’t have it, he may use tactical.nukes that render it useless for agriculture and life. He will.do.it to.make sure NATO cannot have access to.the fruits of Ukrainian agriculture.
Excellent analogy of Putin.
And that is precisely the point where Trump and Putin are MOST ALIKE: they are abusive spouses without accountability or transparency or guardrails. Hopefully Russia’s honchos will learn from Mitch McConnell’s disastrous failures!
Besides both Putin and Trump having many attributes in common, as correctly pointed out by Murfster35, I wish to add that both Trump and Putin are also extreme sadists – both take great pleasure in inflicting torture, suffering, disease and causing the death of others. Both are also borderline paranoid schizophrenics, with Putin being more paranoid than Trump. But there are also some significant differences. Putin is significantly more intelligent than Trump. And Trump is an extreme coward, while Putin is not. When Trump was inducted into the Brighton Beach, NY branch of the “Russian Mafia” (Odessa) by father Fred, Jr. in the mid-1960s, one of the requirements of the “Russian Mafia” (and most Mafias) that you prove loyalty by carrying out a murder. The other reason for carrying out a murder ordered by the Mafia is the Mafia now has something to use against you to destroy you should you at any point attempt to rat them out or become a “double -agent”. But getting back to the example contrasting Putin and Trump….Trump was/is so afraid of personal combat/harm (typical of many bullies) his father made sure he was assigned to murder an elderly frail man. Putin has personally tortured & murdered many men & women and kills live dogs for target practice. If either or both were to disappear off the face of the earth, there would be great celebration by most Americans and most Russians, and of course most Ukranians and Europeans too.
Putin used to be smarter but these days he seems to have descended to almost Trumpian levels of irrationality and possibly also paranoia and delusion. Putin is a bully and all bullies are ultimately cowards. If not, he would not be sitting 40 feet away from everyone. And while he is more dangerous to Russia and Europe, Trump in the WH was more dangerous to America and the planet. Neither should be allowed near seats of power, for obvious reasons.
Put fat ass and his crime family in a wood chipper and little man tits will get the message.