Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is a man from the old order that has straddled the new. The transition has not been an easy one for him in Russia, for to embrace democracy as we know it began it’s decline since he moved into power by the threat of a wagging finger under a posture of imagined violence. Since then he has delivered on that imagination and brought it into a terrifying reality.

He has many enemies that includes his friends who wait as hyenas sitting at his table with or without an invitation. There are many mouths to feed at the top in the theocracy that he now rules and the masses are getting hungry. He provides nothing new as a leader except the standard behavior of any despot that can only hold on to power by keeping the people’s mind elsewhere.

With the World Bank reporting that almost 50% of the GDP of Russia is eaten up by corruption and falling fast also in the international corruption index from 90^th place to 129^th position, shows that Putin is in trouble. And unless you are the ultimate business gambler, you do not do business here in this Russia unless you are one of them in spirit. But like all thieves it will only be a matter of time before each thief tries to destroy the other.

It is not that Putin is wholly corrupt it is just that he is in too deep with the ‘enemy within’ and does not know how to get out of it. So like the Roman Emperors of old, Putin distracts the citizens with a local small war or two to keep them from rising up and where only he rises in the popularity polls.

That is in the main the only reason he has claimed back Crimea and supports the other thugs in the Ukraine wearing balaclavas and heaving beer bellies while carrying AK47’s as peacemakers. This distraction will work for a time and he has already shown his limitations as a backyard bully by not being able to control these dim-witted murdering thugs. Yet Europe is showing a familiar restraint of nothing less than an appeasement of Putin and his cronies. This of course has already empowered him and there is talk he is even taller than we first thought. The theatre of distraction is working very well indeed.

The problem with appeasement as Winston Churchill pointed out so well regarding Hitler, is that an appeaser is like someone feeding a crocodile hoping it will eat him last. So far Putin still appears to be un-sated and only momentary startled by the worlds reaction to him that he is actually the ‘bad guy.’

When he recovers from this self discovery, rest assured he will carry on as if nothing happened for the other reality is Vladimir Putin is really not in charge at all and his narcissism is real. And as he rides the tigers, to quote Winston again, the tigers are getting hungrier and old Vlad is in real danger of falling of.

The blame game is the only show in town for now until more innocent people die and someone somewhere decides to do something that has any real meaning or impact beyond tired old rhetoric. Until then, it is best advised not to buy any more Russian French fries. 

Barry Clifford