News of the World - Putin Crazed Republicans Rush Stage To Wipe His Feet With Their Tears
Not totally true, but pretty close. -- He has a face like a hamster. See below for the button to the non-hit song, "Burn in Hell Hamster Face"
(I love AI. Listen to the hit song Burn in Hell Hamster Face below; even the Hamsters love it! Note to anyone listening to the audio voice-over: I can’t play songs on the computer and tape them through my mic; it was just hiss. Sorry. But it’s a one-take budget affair, this will have to do—next time. )
Dictators and tyrants should not be popular in a democracy.
Vladimir Putin, however, is popular among many conservatives. One might not be surprised if these celeb dictators were good-looking, had nice beards, and were buff. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, come on down. But Putin?
Not a lot of competition, perhaps. Dead dictators find it difficult to produce new material. Other big-name dead dictators are also not doing well. Hitler was a squirrelly little pedo, and outside of Hamas, his book is no longer selling well.
Today, Syria’s Hassad is not considered attractive; he has the little Hitler moustache, which hurts him, and t-shirt sales are non-existent.
Korea’s Kim Jong-Un is struggling to extend his dictator brand power; this guy executes people with anti-aircraft guns, kills his brother, has a legacy bonus, is very Shakespearean, and makes his people eat grass; he should have dictator groupies. Still, no, he’s fat, chinless and not attractive.
However, aside from Lukashenko in Belarus and Afewerki in Eritrea, both of whom suffer from “I haven’t heard of your country” prejudices, the only one left is Putin.
Well, Xi perhaps, but he’s old and isn’t trying to be young; he isn’t charismatic, doesn’t work out, and puts Uyghers in reeducation camps. Putting Uyghurs in reeducation camps is evil; it’s not the type of Dr. Evil badass evil that plays well on social media.
So Putin is getting all the buzz. As Boris Johnson noted, Putin has a face like a hamster, which is not much of an improvement from his old gerbil face. People should not mess around with Botox and steroids.
Putin leads the biggest country in the world, which helps him, but he’s not a communist; he’s the world’s biggest thief; his nation is a mafia state with big, dangerous bombs.
So why is Putin so popular with some conservatives? Is it a man crush? Putin is not a lady’s man. He’s 71, but unless we bring in the sugar babies, Putin is not getting the youth vote.
Some potential reasons:
At least Putin doesn’t talk about Peoplekind.
Putin doesn't attend pride events nor jump on woke bandwagons. He does not look sympathetically at a shop teacher who, in a desperate bid for attention, strapped on fake breasts the size of small Hindenburgs and regendered himself. The humanity indeed.
While Putin is a full-on dictator and controls the media, it does not mean that he does not pose for domestic consumption. After all, this is the retiree who learned to skate late in life and now plays hockey games with ex-NHLers, kind souls who let him score six goals a game by allowing weak wrist shots to go through their legs. Imagine playing soccer with your three-year-old nephew, and you let him score; it’s just about making him feel good and mitigating the risk of a sudden meltdown or false accusation that Uncle grabbed his wiener.
Putin is famous for his topless horseback riding and sticking to the dictator textbook, especially “Chapter Four: What is Macho?” Trudeau read the same textbook as Putin but used a newer textbook edition. Trudeau loves the shirtless jogging shots, but trying to be more Indian than Indians while dancing in costume was a dead loss.
Zelensky is a Crook.
Ukraine was corrupt when it was a Russian vassal state under Victor Yanukovych. It has improved, but wartime is a bad time to work on a corruption problem, like quitting beer during Octoberfest. But the broad consensus is that corruption isn’t getting worse.
Kremlin propagandists - make no mistake, the Kremlin and its army of Twitter/X bots are some of the best liars and propagandists that the 20th and 21st centuries have known - short of that impressive run of Goebbels - are busy.
But it is strange how pro-Putinists in the US put this argument in their pro-Putin bromance kit when Putin is considered by many to be the richest man in the world. He owns a nearly 200,000-square-foot palace on the Black Sea and is estimated to be worth about $200 billion.
He does well for someone making $140k annually.
The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend.
Humans have a strong tendency to join tribes. But it’s run amock in an age where most people get their information from the staccato info bursts our algorithmic overlords offer to us digital peasants. The heuristic of “if they are an enemy of my enemy, they must be friends” is painless and easy. Also quite dumb.
But being dumb today is not an impediment. Furthermore, when readers judge a country thousands of miles away from which they get precious little information (because that country controls the media), they will get nothing more than state propaganda that those clever little Kremlin bots and Kremlin-backed fellow travellers curate.
A report, Enemy of My Enemy, put out by the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, studied two years of Twitter/X activity, including the lead-up to Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, military assault on Ukraine, and traced how accounts aligned with President Vladimir Putin’s messaging disseminated pro-Kremlin narratives in Canadian Twitter/X discussions.
While researchers were following this spicy tale of Russian information-warfare campaigns getting all cosy with Canadian Twitter/X users, around 200,000 Twitter/X accounts were retweeting what the report describes as the greatest hits of the Kremlin’s playlist. Classics like, "Ukraine is just too corrupt for us," "NATO started this war," and the chart-topper, "Russia is just helping Ukraine get rid of Nazis (and their Jew President!)."
And here’s the kicker: a quarter of those polled were like, "Russian disinfo-what now?" The report also shows evidence of 90 pro-Kremlin Twitter/X influencers throwing serious social media parties, attracting Canada's far right and far left. Though these groups probably can't agree on the colour of new snow, they are bonding over their shared hobby of not wanting Canada to send help to Ukraine.
And for a twist on old stereotypes: the far-right is fangirling over Putin's "down with globalism" hits, while the far-left has been jamming to Moscow’s anti-Western tracks since the Cold War was a thing.
They Pushed Him; I Hate It When People Push Me.
The story goes that the West pulled a fast one on Russia at the Cold War's curtain call. They promised no NATO expansion, then went all-in, totally ghosting on integrating Russia into this shiny new European security clique. Instead, they nudged Moscow into its old beef with the US and pals. This storyline—crafted to perfection—makes it look like NATO's the bad guy here, and it's messing with heads over in NATO lands, making it seem like Russia got the raw end of the deal.
Please note that this is an exceptional usage of the oppressor versus oppressed narrative. Well done, Vladimir, you poor oppressed man.
Who's preaching this? In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron spilt at a forum in St. Petersburg that NATO might have dropped the ball over the past two decades, sparking "reasonable" Russian fears. US scholar Michael Mandelbaum and German journalist Gabriele Krone-Schmalz also echoed this sentiment around NATO's expansion, pushing Russia into a corner.
Even John Mearsheimer, a US academic and fan of Dr Evil and Russia, traced Ukraine's issues back to NATO's expansion under Clinton, saying it was unnecessary since Russia was pretty much a non-threat at that time. Mearsheimer is a busy man; he seems to hate Israel more than he hates Ukraine, stating that he is sure that the IDF murdered those concertgoers in Israel as they wanted to save on ransom money—a clever two-in-one trope, the cheap Jew and the false accusation of Israel being a country that murderers its teenagers.
But why is this narrative a bit off? In 1990, the Soviets agreed to a united Germany in NATO without securing a solid no-expansion promise. Post-Cold War, the whole geopolitical game changed. Russia started feeling left out with NATO’s enlargement party, but hey, they even recognized the freedom for states to choose their security alignments in 1990. Fast-forward to 1999, and NATO's actions in Kosovo stirred the pot, leaving Russia feeling sidelined yet again.
Long story short, while some big names thought NATO expansion was the original sin, it wasn’t just about expanding; it was about adapting to a Europe where Russia wasn’t the only one calling the shots. Russia’s ongoing grudge against NATO expansion seems to have more to do with lost influence than broken promises.
Putin’s Tough, He Sits Properly, Not Like Trudeau’s Girly Style
When Trudeau sits, he looks like he is trying to stop a spoon he dropped on his lap from falling through his legs. Although shorter and older, Vlad still has not given up pursuing the stone-cold mafia killer image. But when Putin’s ex-cook Prigozhin, along with a large gang of Wagner Group soldiers, started advancing on Moscow, Putin went all wobbly and left town. This is also the guy who is more paranoid about COVID-19 than your 73-year-old single aunt, that aunt who has barely left her apartment in three years.
Putin famously eats at a table with the other end two first downs away. The US just told him ISIS was coming, and he said I don’t need your help. Then ISIS came and killed 135 citizens. But Putin was sure tough on the terrorists after he ignored warnings and let them through; his press made sure to show one guy two-ear challenged and another looking like he lost a bar fight. And even Russians didn’t believe Putin’s sad attempt to blame Ukraine.
Ukrainians Sound Russian and Putin says they are all a happy family.
If you listen, Putin has fake historical narratives, but if you fancy relying on Tucker Carlson’s fawning love-sick school girl’s crush version, please move to the library's fiction section. However, Carlson has shown a tendency to pursue stories that he knows are false because he knows that they get him more attention and more money. I respect this position more than the fanboy bleacher seat where he can’t stop mooning at Putin.
Tom Holland, for instance, criticized Putin's extensive narrative about Russian history, deeming it "calamitous" and noting how it distorts facts to suit a Russian-centric view. He emphasized the misuse of historical events and comparisons, likening Russia's claim over Ukraine to Britain's claim over Ireland, which he found bizarre.
Another historian, Sergey Radchenko from Johns Hopkins, countered Putin's narrative that Russia as a state dates back to the 9th century, pointing out that the same could be said for Ukraine, highlighting the selective use of history to create a state-centric narrative favouring Russia. Ronald Suny from the University of Michigan also criticized the mythologizing of Russian history, noting it was shaped to justify imperial control over Ukraine.
You think Your Mother and Me are Made of Money Reason.
Note: Canada isn’t a threat; the navy’s motto is, “Let’s see if this used piece of junk sinks.” Their air force is constantly solicited with Smithsonian Military Cold War Museum donor requests, and their troops famously were - until quite recently - still using pistols left over from WWII.
Can’t afford it is often combined with accusations of Zelensky stealing Ukraine’s defence funding. The US spends less proportionately on Ukraine than the major Western European countries, but there is also the pay me now or later issue. Not to mention that, according to the Washington Post, 90% of U.S. military expenses for Ukraine are spent in America on American equipment.
If the U.S. stops funding Putin and gives him Ukraine, it likely will trigger a massive attack of “Keeping up with the Russians” envy and the wet dream of a Taiwan conquest will be made real. How would I know? I wouldn’t, I’m an idiot, but Xi has said so himself, and I’m a trusting soul.
I wonder where the snotty talking heads on TV who condescendingly said that only an idiot would think that a guy who is massing his troops on your border might invade?
Yes, the expert opinion says that if the US doesn’t step up, it will trigger them to beam the pussy version of the bat signal into the sky for signal watchers in Moscow and Beijing, and the next ten years of military expenses will climb. So again, pay me now or pay me later.
Probably Putin will see the pussy bat signal, and he will develop a late-night craving for Polish sausages.
Oh, the grand old game of imperial nostalgia! Moscow, ever the doting caretaker, claims it's just looking out for ethnic Russians wherever they might be chilling – from the quaint town of Narva in Estonia to the bustling streets of Latvia. And let's not forget Lithuania, awkwardly sandwiched between the muscle-flexing Kaliningrad and buddy Belarus. The idea? Swiftly swoop in and take over before NATO can even Google Map the Baltics.
Belarus got a taste of street fever in 2020, and it seems the Kremlin's been mulling over a "Make Belarus Russian Again" project. Despite having a dictator pal in Lukashenko, he’s been a bit of a letdown – no troops for Ukraine, no airbase chats. The solution? Maybe annex Belarus outright. After all, it's not like the West would do much more than tweet about it.
Then there’s Moldova, hailed as possibly the “next Ukraine.” With Russian boots already in Transnistria, Moldova is like the last piece of a geopolitical puzzle, especially if it wants to play dominoes to NATO's doorstep in Romania.
Down south, there’s Stalin’s noble land Georgia, chilling with its Black Sea beaches, not fully embraced by Europe but isolated enough to avoid Moscow's gaze. Control Georgia, and suddenly, you're the gatekeeper for a whole bunch of trade from Asia.
Kazakhstan? Borat can’t hold them off on his own, and even the seductive powers of his sister, Kazakhstan’s second-best prostitute, will likely not be enough to turn back Vlad. Remember, It's got those northern areas with more Russians than a Moscow subway or the Air Canada Centre when the Russians used to play Canada in hockey.
And, lest we forget, the Caspian energy bonanza. Russia might be eyeing those oil-rich fields across Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Sure, the West might throw a sanctions party, but a Russian naval presence in the Caspian could keep the energy flowing and the cash registers ringing. Vlad doesn’t buy into Trudeau or Biden’s love for clean tech. He still cares about oil.
It is also confusing that anyone who loves testosterone would channel Hitler's famous appeaser. And certainly, appeasement is not macho; appeasement is the whiny Neville Chamberlain. Churchill was a fat, non-gym-friendly alcoholic who lived into his eighties, saved the world, wrote brilliant books, was a talented painter, and was a great conservative.
Unlike Putin, Churchill did not learn soccer at sixty and forced players who sported the Three Lions jerseys to let him shoot the ball through their legs.
But the Pro-Putin right-wing faction - I’m right-wing and can’t stand Putin - still confuses me. Is it based on one or a combination of the arguments above? Is it more a feeling-based motivation? It’s difficult to parse.
Do people vote based on which candidate best vicariously voices their frustrations or fulfils their dreams? Equally bad is voting Liberal to make one feel morally superior.
If we had social media, then JFK would have certainly been the man to fulfil our sexual fantasies vicariously; maybe voting for Trump is because people are buried in resentment, and he has found a way not to resurrect them but bury them deeper - but again, a bad idea.
Do those twelve seniors who still like Trudeau do so because he is pretty and fresh and hits all the happy buzzwords? But pretty, fresh? We look for that in a tampon commercial, so should different elements not govern how we vote?
Putin taps the same vein as Trump: bitterness that we think is nostalgia, a longing for a better day, a willingness to speak directly against those forces who frustrate us in a way we cannot, or perhaps it is the opposite, the same reason many chase social media influencers. The danger with influencers is that they differ from celebrities. Celebrities have genuine talent and transfer their brand power to a product or service. But with influencers who are famous for being famous, followers want to be like them.
Putin is a cruel, vicious, murdering monster.
My mother-in-law, who follows Putin for reasons that conservatives are not entitled to, that being because she was raised in the Soviet Union, can be excused. But I still lost her Stalin fridge magnet over the garbage can.
My mother-in-law is unable or will not toss off such a large piece of her identity. But it is not the blindness that nationalism can bring that brings our conservatives to simp for this monster; it is unknown, it is sad, it is vile. Of course, Putin has a few redeeming features, but overall, he is a monster and beast and should be reviled, not flirted with.
I also miss my father.