How to think about Vladimir Putin
An interesting difference of opinion to what we see in the news every day. Your thoughts?
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I'm sitting by Maidan in downtown Kyiv as I write this. I have seen what he and his henchman do to this country. The hacking of utilities, the draining of a trillion dollars from the economy because Ukraine has to protect itself from the midget's aggression.
Not to mention the 10,000 people killed by his invasion of Eastern Ukraine in a war that has continued for 3 years now.
http://liveuamap.com/
The midget is not one of the wealthiest, if not the weathiest man in the world because of his salary as leader of the muscovites.
Nothing to see here. Moving on.
Are we all just sheep to be led down any well-spoken road.
Would it change your minds if we could prove he ordered those people dead?
Or would you just come up with an American parallel and say that's the way power moves.
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Remember being outraged when Obama was caught live-mic telling Putin he could be more flexible after the 2012 election.
Do we owe him an apology now? Perhaps some accolade for being ahead of the curve?
But you'd choose Putin over Hilary.
Me, I'd still vote for a lying thief over a murderous thug.
But that's just me.
Pol Pot? A planet-killer asteroid?
I don't think anyone here is attempting to promote Putin's motives as intellectually valid or that the man himself is an advocate of liberty and personal rights. But I think that it may equally be as wrong to paint him as a dictator/tyrant given the situation. I do not put Mr. Putin as a saint, but the author makes several interesting observations and forwards an alternative line of thinking to Mr. Putin's motives which deserve at least some semblance of investigation.
Don't be afraid to post your reasons in detail here. To me, the politics between nations depends much on history and background and to attempt to gloss over or over-simplify does an injustice to impartiality.
I am quite surprised, not so much by the errors of Christopher Caldwell in his Imprimis piece on Putin, but more so by the general agreement with him by this distinguished audience. First, let me put Mr. Caldwell into a proper perspective. Harvard educated, writer for several left-wing publications in addition to being a senior editor of the Weekly Standard, Mr. Caldwell appears to be somewhat confused as which camp he wants to belong to. Wanting to be an intellectual and possessing logic, yet unwilling to break away from the Progressive Intellectual establishment, he tries to be on the fence, as evidenced by his other articles where he criticizes Obama, but very carefully, never touching the basis of Obama's socialist evil..
Now, closer to the subject on hand – Putin and Russia. The article has numerous factual errors, which I can list, but that would make my comments rather boring and long-winded. OK, I'll list a few – such as his claim that Russia has recently been frequently humiliated, robbed and misled (as in, by whom? Unless he means by its own ruling class...), or that the country was defenseless back in 2000 (never mind the largest nuclear arsenal in the world backed by a huge army (admittedly weaker than before) and the largest landmass), or that he "disciplined his country's plutocrats" – well, he kind of did – there were multiple mafias and multiple bosses – now there is one Mafia and one Boss. Swallowing Yukos was a symbol of the One Mafia. If one is to be intellectually honest, what should he say about Putin's grab of the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, or a piece of Georgia? Oh, yes, he reined in Chechnya – really? The Islamic State of Chechnya is today an essentially independent region where slavery (real, hardcore Islamic slavery) is alive and well, with Sharia and their own military. No, of course American "intellectuals" do not like to talk about any other slavery but the American slavery. And finally, Mr. Caldwell sounds very sympathetic to Putin's regret of the former "republics" breaking away – never mind that those were brutally conquered countries that were seized, annexed and sometimes almost exterminated by Russia (czarist or communist, either way).
But the interesting issue here is trying to understand American Intellectuals' view of Putin's Russia. On the one hand, they like what they see – a strong State, autocratic rule with the Party as being always right. The Intellectuals' dream come true – whether it is achieved through communism, socialism or "democratic socialism(!!)" - the Party always wins and in order to be at the feeding troth the Intellectual just needs to join the Party. On the other hand, there is the natural tension between similar systems competing for the leadership role. This is the basis of the Communists hating the Nazis and the Nazis hating the Communists. This is the reason the Democrats hate Trump and Trump hates the Democrats. So, we have this article here, by Mr. Caldwell, that is simultaneously full of sympathy and criticism of Putin, while basing the reasoning for both on perverted facts and twisted logic.
Is it 11 or 12 people he has assassinated in the last several years?
There is not a single positive thing anyone should ever say about this thug with a napoleon complex. If odummy had the guts to stand up to him (as we had promised the Ukrainians when they gave up their nukes), the midget would have ran away and cried like all muscovite bullies do.
10,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine and in the takeover of Crimea. Oil fields in eastern Ukraine and off shore wells in Crimea (and of course the bases). And the world stood by and let it happen and believed the Pravda bs.
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