A clearly rattled and unsettled Vladimir Putin took to the airwaves yet again today, to give another long, rambling, almost incoherent speech reminiscent of a Trump rally. And in doing so, he gave psychologists and psychiatrists years of data to examine.
But through all of the paranoid rambling, Putin kept letting these little flashes of clarity to shine through, and to show that he was well aware of just how deep a river of shit he’s in.
He started by repeating the same old tired saw that Ukraine was committing ethnic genocide in the two breakaway republics, and actually planning an invasion of Russia. This despite the fact that Russia already had 190,000 troops massed along 3 Ukrainian borders. And he accused the US and NATO for using their sanctions to try to break the economic will of the Russian people. And proclaimed that the west was trying to split Russia into competing factions.
But then Putin kept fucking up and showing just how aware of his desperate situation he is. He called anti war protesters in Russia scum and traitors, and promising to deal with them. He went on to say that it may well be possible that the Russian republic might have to go through a great philosophical purge in order to leave a more pure, homogenous Russia population. Read as a whole bunch of innocent Russian fuckers are about to end up in a gulag somewhere.
He also took the extreme step of,for the first time, blaming the oligarchs dor Russia’s troubles. He called them leeches and profiteers, and criminals, sucking the life blood from Mother Russia. Gee. No wonder so many Russian oligarchs have suddenly decided to relocate for extended vacations in Maldives, they want to put some deep blue water between themselves and their insane patriarch.
He also ranted against treason in the Russian military. In part this may well be due to videos released back into Russia from Ukraine, with Russian POWs telling Putin that he can run, but he can’t hide. Sooner or later they will come home, and when they do, they will lead the effort to rise up against Putin.
Putin is clearly psychotic, but he’s still sane enough to realize the situation he’s in. His ranting against very real opponents in Russia shows that he has a real problem on his hands. As does his admission that the US/NATO sanctions are hurting everyday Russians, and may turn popular opinion.
So what next? What do we look for now? Well, according to one analyst, start here. Start looking for mass resignations in the Russian government. If the Chair of the Russian National Bank resigns, that’s not a good sign for Putin. It means the bank is approaching insolvency with no clear way out. If the head of the Russian Stock Market resigns, it’s in freefall, and likely can’t reopen any time soon. If generals with a passport in their pocket and a packed bag start resigning, Putin is losing military support. And watch for oligarchs in safe places to start to criticize Putin and his war. They’re the only ones with the resources to stand up to him.
All of the news coverage is on the carnage in Ukraine, but I beg you, pay attention to what happens in Moscow. Because that’s Putin’s base of power, and if there start to be cracks in his support, that’s where it will appear.
I’m getting the impression that Putain thinks he’s Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvilii
No, but he WANTS to be!
Putin seems to be in that spot in time when you go from being in total control to that tipping point when nothing is in control anymore. The Shah, Samoza, Batista, Marcos were all at this point at one time. I guess more recently quaddafi. It is hard to imagine in having it happen to such a large and powerful country. For those who thought and said Biden was weak for relying on sanctions and weapons, you should all apologize. It turns out he made the exact right and proportional response.
Counterpoint: how strong or powerful was this country in actuality, given what we have seen over these last three weeks? A gas station with nukes still remains a gas station.
To put it in terms of the excellent HBO series The Wire, Vladimir Vladimirovich just went full Stringer Bell. You should NEVER go full Stringer Bell because it demonstrates a) that you have misunderstood what got you to where you were in the first place and b) that you are slipping through the cracks of the two worlds you’re attempting to straddle, the world as it is and the one you’d like it to be. The system you are part of usually flushes you soon after that. It’s only a question of how many other people you take down with you.
Sane or not, and quite frankly it is up for discussion whether paranoid people are actually sane, paranoids do stupid things in an effort to assuage the paranoid feelings they have and these things are not just constantly looking over their shoulders.
Pathological narcissism isn’t sanity, but it also doesn’t mean someone can’t act with some type of twisted analysis used to rationalize their behavior. In fact, they use anything they can find to justify their reprehensible personality disorder. The truth about control is NO ONE IS IN CONTROL OF EVERYTHING & NEVER WILL BE. With a planet spinning at 1000mph & traveling around the sun at 67,000mph, in a galaxy expanding & traveling at 1,000,000mph, occupied by 7 billion souls ever moving, thinking & doing, well…who is in control of all of that? Only narcissism & stupidity is desperate enough to believe in ultimate control of anything. When death arrives at YOUR door, let’s see what control you have. It’s a fucking bad joke all the way around. One that every government on earth desperately tries to capture but never can & never will. Math says otherwise. I believe in facts & critical thinking, not the ill formed fantasies of the citizens of ANY & ALL cultures, especially the shallow, lazy, phone addicted, money grubbing, self important consumers that call themselves citizens of this one. Is putin any more insane than our former fascist president, who is still free after violating the most powerful oath taken, i.e., the oath of the president of the country? Tell me who’s more insane? The Russians, who can’t get the truth told, or US, who have all the access in the world but 75+million refuse to acknowledge any truth whatsoever? I think we win by a landslide.
Let’s put Trump and Pootin in the same rubber room and throw away the key!?