The Totalitarian Dysfunction

 

It makes sense to me to start this post with Madison Cawthorn and his disturbing embrace of Putin and Hitler. I don't know enough about Cawthorn's family to judge anything from them but that Cawthorn was homeschooled and got his biases somewhere. The love evangelicals have for Putin feels wrong after hearing conservatives for so long decry "godless commies" in Russia. But the big problem they have is with the godless, multicultural liberals here, so they can kind of ignore the necessary multiculturalism of Russian imperialism and the dictates that actually exclude evangelism in favor of his nods to the orthodox church and the total capture of the state apparatus, from media to military. It's like Putin got all seven mountains going for him.  (And weirdly, atheism is not actually how most Russians identify--it's about 13% according to one poll. The jury is out on the number of actual US atheists. I'd like to think it was that high.) 

But anyway based on whatever, somehow the youngest GOP Rep. decided it was okay to demonize Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president who is a former tv actor and won a democratic election, as a thug and called him woke to just add extra stink on the shot. 

Yeah. Zelenskyy is woke. That means he is reasonable and respects the citizens of his state. That is not what being a thug is. 

#Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's recent press marathon was at one point interrupted by a heckler who accused the current president of continuing Petro Poroshenko’s course. Unexpectedly, the response revealed the head of state’s standpoint on #LGBTQ. pic.twitter.com/eCNV1i87od

— Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) October 13, 2019

A thug is when you deny people their rights. When you cause harm to people for no reason, and drive them from their homes.  That is what the thug, Putin, is doing right now. He is causing the bombing of hospitals and schools. He is harming Ukrainian people, destroying them, even the Russian-speaking ones, for his own ideas about what nationalism means. 

But I don't think Cawthorn understands what he's talking about because I also think Putin is incompetent.  The root of totalitarian thinking is incompetence. One wouldn't have to tamp down criticism if one didn't know it was deadly and accurate. One wouldn't have to stifle journalists if one was making great news. One wouldn't imprison or poison rivals if one wasn't bone-terrified of what that competition meant.

Look at what Putin has accomplished--he had unified the EU and NATO, after having for years surreptitiously done his best to divide. He has made Zelenskyy look like the far bigger and more physically brave man. He, in the absence of a cats paw like Trump, has only bravado in the face of certain economic devastation for his country. And he did it all. It was through his great act. His terrible act. 

I think Trump was also incompetent, and is even more so by now. Why would Russia put any interest in favor of someone who would not be good--for them? I find myself revisiting the Trump/Russia dysfunction, and even wonder if Trump chose killing General Soleimani, out of all possible choices in response to Iran's aggressive stance, to be his own decision, or  a side-effect of Putin having entered Syria, being p-o'd at the guy who encouraged a thing that ultimately proved worthless. 

So anyway, Putin isn't a "strongman" in the sense of having strength, but has to exercise strength to make up for weakness. And when his government has been reduced to a command economy, his currency diminished, his intelligence operations discovered to be passing him lies to please him--that's his failures as a leader finally coming out. Because when you control everything to keep everything from being out of control, sometimes things  go out of control because you suck. 

Just a thought.