Tag: Is Ukraine a distraction

Putin

Putin really could fall — but will that help the West as much as we think? | Salon.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a ceremony to receive credentials from foreign ambassadors to Russia at the Alexander Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow on September 20, 2022. (GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin faces multiple crises and his grip on power may be fading. None of that will solve the West’s problems

The demagoguery of Trump and his Fox News heralds is more a symptom of this spreading virus than the main cause of our crisis. That cause is partly conspiratorial and malevolent, but often it’s just mindless: Americans (and other Westerners) have been increasingly stressed and dispossessed in recent decades by the frantic financialization and consumerization of civil society. It’s groping and goosing us 24/7, bypassing our minds and hearts on its way to our lower viscera and our wallets by titillating us, intimidating us, tracking us, indebting us and leaving us enmeshed in a spider’s web of commercials come-ons and pressures.

Unlike Putin, Donald Trump is both a product and an accelerant of that social malady. Putin has his oligarchs and his rubber-stamp parliament, but he hasn’t mastered the new autocrats’ learning curve, which may be transforming the West even as he clings to the weakest elements of Russia’s old authoritarianism: a society running on fear more than on love.

Source: Putin really could fall — but will that help the West as much as we think? | Salon.com

Putin

Russia’s ‘Victory Day’ and the Trump-Putin Alliance Against Ukraine | The Smirking Chimp

Trump Remains Loyal to Putin. Trump’s initial take on Russia’s 2022 invasion was to call Putin “savvy” and a “genius.” He has showered endless praise on the Russian dictator, never uttering an unkind word about him. Russia’s state-controlled media has replayed all of it.

President Biden and a united NATO deprived Putin of the “Victory Day” celebration that he desired this year. But Putin isn’t finished—with Ukraine, Trump, or American democracy. Recently, U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Putin may increase his efforts to interfere with upcoming U.S. elections.

Compared to the obstacles that Putin encountered in Ukraine, undermining American democracy is his path of least resistance to a momentous Russian “Victory Day” down the road. As Trump and his Republican allies suppress voting, place Trump’s minions in critical state positions that could influence election outcomes, and push bogus post-election audits that destroy voter confidence, they have become Putin’s accomplices.

Source: Russia’s ‘Victory Day’ and the Trump-Putin Alliance Against Ukraine | The Smirking Chimp