The problem with Putin

The problem with Vladimir Putin isn’t that he is Putin but that there’s such a thing as the randomness of biological accidents. Had he not been born as himself and in Russia but, somewhere far down the watery southern latitudes, he could have been a chieftain in Pago Pago, there to carouse all day in the sun. And legally an American national.

Or he could have been Leonardo di Caprio and be "King of the World" or the tragic Leni Robredo and get beaten very badly by you-know-who. Putin could even have been consigned to ignominy by ignominious fate by becoming nothing more than the mere fictitious character Dobby in Harry Potter.

But Putin had to be Putin, the ruler of Russia for 18 years, and thus the natural whipping boy of life's only real controlling narrative, as narrated by the Americans. As such he is bad, evil, and everything in-between. Me personally, I don’t think he’s bad even if I cannot say he’s good either. Let's just say I probably wouldn’t have acted differently in his shoes.

I pity Putin because he cannot get out of the spotlight relentlessly trained on him without let-up. He’s in a position where his every action is considered an initiative when the poor fella is merely reacting. Ukraine is seen as an attack when in fact it was a response. But of course there’s nobody with balls willing to sacrifice for unadulterated truth.

When Putin rattles his nuclear sabre, all that the world sees is Putin rattling his nuclear sabre. Nobody with balls is willing to see that nukes have been trained first at Putin's balls from bases in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey. All at the instigation of the US, the first and only country ever to drop atom bombs on innocent civilians.

Nobody loves war. Even I am against the invasion of Ukraine by Putin regardless of whether I think he had some justification doing so. War is a terrible thing. People get killed, properties get destroyed. Lives are turned upside down. Yet nobody with balls would dare find the real culprit. Instead they take it out on the whipping boy, Putin.

When George W. Bush invaded Iraq on manufactured justifications like non-existent weapons of mass destruction, nobody with balls raised a hand to dare ask for evidence or condemned the war. Dubya may be an S.O.B. but he’s everybody's S.O.B. Inspired thus by the silence, America expanded the war and was soon almost all over the place.

So you see, who controls the narrative controls life. In virtually all its aspects. You'd see it everywhere, if only you had balls for eyes. I almost cried when I heard some unfortunate soul saying the Philippine Army was shifting focus to territorial defense and then mouth exactly the American line about "inter-operability" between US and Filipino forces.

If Putin heard the hapless Filipino general speak he must have squirmed in his seat in the Kremlin. There goes another victim, not knowing what hit him. But of course the culprit cannot be seen if nobody wants to see him. America and the American narrative are pretty much like the tree that fell in the forest, not making a sound because there’s no one to hear it.

Vladimir Putin may or may not survive Ukraine. That would all depend on where America takes the narrative. The randomness of biological accidents doesn’t have any influence beyond birth. Had Joe Biden been Vladimir Putin, he would still have attacked Ukraine. So it isn’t Putin as Putin but Putin because he is not only an S.O.B. he is also their S.O.B.

In my childhood, the neighborhood bullies who harassed us smaller kids would call us "Russos" and we would hate it even if we did not know what it meant. Apparently the American narrative was already very much alive then. And Putin at the time didn’t even know he will be THE Putin. He probably was just thankful he wasn’t Camilla Parker Bowles.