Big Bad Vlad
Vladimir Putin is a killer, a terrorist, a sociopath—and a desperate man.
VLADIMIR PUTIN is having the vapors. He fucked with our election to keep his boy Donald John Trump in the White House, he failed bigly, and now, as our new, non-Russian-asset president has decreed, he “will pay a price.” It’s like a snippet from a Dr. Seuss book his GOP fanboys can’t stop talking about:
Vlad is sad.
Very, very sad.
He doesn’t have
What he once had,
And now his future
Looks real bad.
The twerp is making a public spectacle of himself, and all because the President of the United States no longer pays him obeisance. Gone is the slavish lickspittle Trump, his not-so-secret admirer, who never, not once in four years, spoke a disparaging word against him—not when he attacked our elections in 2016, not when he put bounties on our troops, not when he attacked our elections again in 2020.
In Trump’s place is the clear-eyed Joe Biden, who, when he met Putin in Moscow in 2011, told him right to his Botoxed, rodentine face, “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.”
Big Bad Vlad is scared shitless of Biden. That’s why he tried every dirty trick in the book to stop him from being elected. That’s why the sycophants at RT still portray Joe as sleepy and infirm.
But reality is reality. Despite Q’s prophesies, Biden really is president. Despite Russian disinformation, Joe is neither sleepy nor infirm. Despite Vlad’s denials, Putin really did fuck with our election. Despite his hopes of yet another “reset,” this time, he really will pay a price.
When Biden was asked by George Stephanopoulos if he thought Putin was a killer, the president, without pausing to consider the question, replied, “Yes, I do.” And that statement of fact is what sent Big Bad Vlad into his embarrassing public meltdown:
For frame of reference, in 2016, when challenged by Bill O’Reilly of all people, who correctly noted that Putin is a killer, Trump responded: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” In effect, Trump was excusing his overlord’s crimes.
That shit is over and done.
Because here’s the thing. When Big Bad Vlad can parade the U.S. president around like The Gimp in Pulp Fiction, that makes him look like a strong, powerful leader. When the U.S. president calls Putin a killer, and hints at looming retribution for his crimes, that makes Putin look like a petty, insecure tyrant.
Simply put: Trump made Big Bad Vlad look like a winner; Biden makes him look like a loser.
This is why Putin challenged Biden to a debate—as if a sitting U.S. president, in the midst of a global health crisis, would waste even five minutes on that pathetic, sad sociopath. This did not stop the traitors in Congress and on Fox News to rush to Big Bad Vlad’s defense:
But the muscular statements weren’t enough. Putin knew his “strongman” image had taken a hit. What to do about it? Being a sociopath, he lacks empathy. Being an autistic, he lacks the inherent ability, instinctive to neurotypicals, to easily read other people’s emotions. Thus, during times of emotional crisis, when he relies on his own instincts, he does things that seem eccentric, if not downright odd.
Which explains his disastrous decision to fly to Siberia for a photo shoot that he erroneously believed made him look like a tough guy. The Kremlin released these images of its cosplay despot, which he clearly wanted the world to see. And…good lord, the optics are such a fucking embarrassment!
Putin thinks he looks like a strong, protective father. Instead he looks like a little kid— a child, whose mommy bundled him up because it’s cold out.
Here’s Big Bad Vlad, dressed like a teddy bear:
And I guess we’re expected to believe that in this ridiculous shot, he is drinking the blood of his enemies, rather than Juicy Juice from a sippy cup?
Remember that pathetic photo of Trump behind the wheel of the truck, looking like a little brat playing with life-sized Tonkas? Here is Putin’s homage:
Finally, here is Big Bad Vlad and his buddy, apparently attempting a Russian remake of the “Pine Barrens” episode of The Sopranos:
He’s just about to break into the relish packets on the floor of the passenger seat.
Even as the Russian state media gooses the “Big Bad Vlad” narrative…
…it’s pretty clear that, for all the fancy warm clothes, the tsar is naked.
Here is the truth about Vladimir Putin:
He seized power during a terrorist attack of his own making. As I wrote in “Vladimir the Terrible:”
As the millennium approached, tensions with the Chechens continued, and Yeltsin’s health was deteriorating rapidly. For Putin and the fledgling Russian Federation, the pendulum was swinging the wrong way. But then, on 4, 9, and 13 September 1999, a series of apartment bombings befell the Russian cities of Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, killing 300 and injuring a thousand more. These were reported by Russian media to be the work of Chechen separatist terrorists. But compelling evidence suggests that the terrorist attacks were the work of the FSB, which Putin oversaw until 9 August 1999—just a month before the bombings—when he left to be First Deputy Prime Minister. Galvanized by his capable response to the attacks, and endorsed by the still-popular Yeltsin, Putin became Acting Prime Minister later that month. He’s been in power, under a variety of titles, ever since.
Since I wrote that, Yuri Shvets, the ex-KGB who was the primary source for Craig Unger’s American Kompromat, confirmed that the apartment bombings were carried out by Putin’s intelligence service goons.
Putin consolidated power by working with the Russian mafiya, corrupting the judiciary, rooting out his enemies, and presenting himself to his people as their Almighty Savior. Dozens of journalists, dissidents, and political enemies have been killed in the 21 years he’s been in power. As Steven Beschloss writes:
Putin critics and political opponents such as Boris Nemtsov (shot four times), Boris Berezovsky (hanged), Sergei Magnitsky (beaten and died in police custody), Alexander Litvinenko (poisoned) and journalist Anna Politkovskaya (shot at point-blank range) are just some of the Russians who paid with their lives for speaking out against him.
And then there’s the most recent case of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned and escaped with his life after medical treatment in a Berlin hospital (only to be arrested and sentenced to a prison camp upon his return). Putin had this to say about questions of his own culpability and his claims that Navalny was linked to US intelligence: “But that absolutely does not mean he needs to be poisoned. Who needs him? If somebody had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off.” Notice the callous indifference to life and death.
This isn’t just a thing inside Russia’s borders. Vlad’s tentacles extend to the United States as well.
I have long argued that the obduracy of the NRA, awash in dirty rubles, and its staunch refusal to consider even common sense gun control that 95% of Americans want, is a Russian active measure:
The Republican politicians who shill the loudest for “2A” are the strongest boosters of Big Bad Vlad.
Trump is hardly the only GOP politician that Putin owns. As I wrote last December, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has been a de facto Russian asset since his return from Moscow in July of 2018. The New York Times has finally caught up to the story. Johnson’s behavior has been so egregious, and so desperate, that one wonders what exactly he did on that trip. This is not “they paid me vast sums so I do what they say” behavior—Johnson was already obscenely wealthy. This is “I hope no one finds out about the 14-year-old” behavior. (To be clear: I’m not accusing Ron Johnson of such a dalliance, just pointing out that his activities subsequent to his return from Moscow are consistent with being blackmailed. For his sake, I hope he’s just an insane idiot.)
When Biden accused him of being a killer, Putin lost his shit—but he didn’t deny it. Instead, doubling down, he put out a new “kill list” that includes oligarch turned adversary Mikhail Khodorkovsky, British-American businessman Bill Browder, and Christopher Steele, the former MI6 station chief. This is the psycho “strongman” that the likes of Matt Gaetz and Sean Hannity are defending.
Tough guy? To me, these are acts of a desperate man who knows his number’s up.
Tragic that a person, probably born with the intellect of an Einstein, uses it for deadly and vile purposes. Aspergers Syndrome (if that is what Putin has, and one of your sources makes a clear case for it) is not an inherently evil condition. There is a trade off for that genius gene though, physically, emotionally and socially including: difficulty reading faces and gestures - or a room, touch avoidance since even a handshake can cause sensory overload, and having to process emotions intellectually rather than automatically. I started to write "naturally", but someone with Aspergers sees those of us without it as "neurotypical" - most people "do emotions", they don't. A person with this "high end autism" can appear arrogant, when in fact he or she is anxious. Connecting to people is a real challenge (but to dogs and horses it is wonderfully therapeutic). I suspect, most people with Aspergers are never diagnosed, and probably don't need to be.
Why one person with this condition becomes a benevolent billionaire, while another grows up to be a malevolent dictator, is a question for the ages and early childhood specialists. What is clear, though, is how to respond to them, and it sounds as if our defense and diplomatic experts have tutored all our powers-that-be on how to do just that.
I find it curious, looking back at American history to the present, that we have elected presidents who probably had Aspergers. Experts in neuropsychology suggest Thomas Jefferson had it, for example - a man whose brilliant contributions have grounded us in democracy for 2 1/2 centuries. More recently we have had candidates who may share some of those characteristics. Although they did not win, they would have been superb presidents.
Yeah we zowie. I don’t know which I like best, Rodentine, Obdurate or your reference to the Pine Barrens episode, one of my favorites.
But let’s talk turkey here.
That smarmy little scumbag made a veiled threat on the life of our new president. It is time we respond accordingly.
In context, I am the granddaughter of Russian immigrants who spent time in Saint Petersburg as a delegate an an exchange of judges, family law experts and mental health professionals. I was there when Russian people were celebrating the reopening of their Christian churches and first able to return to open and joyful worship.
His good shall be interred with his bones. Sooner the better.