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| Vanity of vanities: "My reputation & glory or else... ...or else you die" |
To save his vanity the Russian "mafia" boss pictured above has persisted in his violent pursuit of conquest against Ukraine. He has dug himself into a hole and he cannot easily backout without losing face; for how is he going to justify the loss of thousands of lives if his expansionist goals are not achieved? His vanity means that he wants to be feted as a successful autocrat bringing victory, wealth and empire to his country. Therefore he must go on and continue to dig his hole come what may. Those who serve him are either sycophants whose interests lie with his mafia regime or are deluded by his media control as he exploits the very natural human desire for tribal pride and a "home team" win. The rest serve him out of fear of imprisonment or assassination.
He continues to pursue his vain project of conquest even though that pursuit has the possibility of triggering nuclear Armageddon. That's no problem to this proud gangster and his acolytes. The thousands he has already killed will be portrayed by his propaganda machine as someone else's fault and a justifiable response to conspiracies threatening national existence.
He is a slave to his pride and that slavery will likely mean that many, many more will die to add to the thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have already been killed in his seeking the feelgood fix of imperial power and conquest. He is no novelty in human history; the past is littered with would-be warmongering tyrants like him who murder rivals and kill thousands in their ambitious wars as they seek to satisfy their need for kudos, accolade and glory as great empire builders. He is just another face in a rogues gallery of tyrants enslaved to their base nature, classic studies in the squalid side of the human condition.
Relevant Links
1. Former Russian tycoon and Kremlin insider blasts Putin: "He is leading us into the abyss"
2. Can the EU find a Russia whisperer to mediate an end to the war in Ukraine? - BBC News
Quote: Now the EU is looking to join the [mediation] effort and ensure that any deal, if ever done, is the best for both Ukraine and European security. Vladimir Putin claims he is open to the idea as long as whoever is appointed "has not said all sorts of nasty things about us"
That statement by Putin may express just how historically out-in-the-European-cold Russian autocrats have felt. This feeling may well go back hundreds of years. They've so often been out of the rich European club. Does this have its roots in the Byzantine vs Rome split? What Putin won't accept is that the best contemporary way forward for Russia is a constitutionally argumentative democracy, not an empire building autocracy where disagreement is forbidden.
3. I was part of Putin’s propaganda machine. Ordinary Russians won’t overthrow him
QUOTE:“When I came to Channel One, it was an absolutely ordinary TV channel. We broadcast news from all over the world – from the United States, from the United Kingdom, from Europe – and there were no special restrictions. But step by step, the rules changed, and more and more topics became forbidden,” she says.
By the time she left, “we couldn’t say anything positive about Europe, about Western Europe, about the United States, and we had to show Putin as the saviour of Russia. If something was going wrong, we had only one rule. We had to say Putin is good, but his officials are to blame.”
Interesting but not really anything we didn't already surmise!
It's Putin's destiny to keep digging.
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