Mwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!

Good. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, maybe I can actually think, and write, coherently.

It’s hard to stop laughing when you’ve just read an article about Vladimir Putin — in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black — speaking about the “rottenness” of the U.S. political system because (according to him) “Everything that is happening to Trump is a politically-motivated persecution of a political rival,” which “. . . just exposed their [America’s] internal problems.”

Okay, then. A lot of people — even a lot of Americans — would tend to agree with that; and a lot would argue the exact opposite. That’s fine; as Americans, we are free to do that. But I’m not here to discuss Donald Trump. It’s just that, coming from Vladimir Putin, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .

Mwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!

Oh, I’m sorry. I just can’t get past the image of that lying, scheming, murdering little criminal, sitting on his throne and signing decree after decree robbing his people of every single human right they’ve ever had; having his detractors imprisoned or murdered for speaking against him; sending tens of thousands of young men to their deaths in a war that he started for his own narcissistic purposes; wiping out entire cities and slaughtering civilian populations without a second thought; starving innocent people in other countries by cutting off their food supply from Ukraine . . . and at the same time having the cojones to call someone else “rotten.” Please tell me: What parallel universe is he living in??

I suppose it’s all part of the narcissism, and his paranoia, and perhaps even a minuscule bit of deeply-buried, unacknowledged regret, that are now causing him to look at his mirror image and think he’s seeing someone else. I know I’m not a psychologist, but that’s the best I can come up with at the moment. Does he really not know what he is, or what he’s done and is continuing to do? Is he so deeply mired in his own delusions that he just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper into his self-made hole? Isn’t that the very definition of psychosis?

And what if, one day, he should wake up and have an “aha moment”? What is he likely to do when he realizes how desperate he is to find a way out of that hole, and that he’s just about run out of options? I’m not sure I’ll be laughing then.

*. *. *

In the meantime, though, there are immediate consequences being observed among his own people. Aside from the mass exodus of men of military age, there is also the start of a “brain drain” — the departure of increasing numbers of professionals, scientists, technical experts, academics, and others so vital to a country’s continued advancement.

And, to me, the most disturbing sign of all was a small article in Monday’s news. In a school in Rostov Oblast, Russia, 15-year-old Grigory B., wearing a Guy Fawkes mask,* got into a confrontation with a janitor. Grigory pulled out a kitchen knife he had brought to school with him, other adults intervened, and three people were stabbed (not fatally) before security forces were able to bring the boy under control. While being arrested, he shouted that he was being attacked by “Ukrainians” and “Poles.” It turns out that he is a member of a pro-Putin youth movement known as Yunarmiya (“Youth Army”), considered to be the equivalent of the Hitler Youth, “engaged in brainwashing Russian schoolchildren with various fakes about the ‘terrible’ countries of the West and the ‘greatness’ of Russia.” [New York Times, September 11, 2023.] I’m hearing echoes of the Cold War years, and it scares me.

The power of propaganda — particularly when directed, day after day, at the minds of the youngest and most vulnerable — is terrible to behold. We’ve seen what it did for Hitler, and for Stalin. Are we about to see it again?

Not laughing now . . .

Brendochka
9/13/23

* Guy Fawkes (1570-1606): A member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a plan to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne.