I wrote before about Ukraine as a proxy war. Today I’d like to sharpen the focus a bit.
“‘Putin, for all his macho persona, he’s not good at making tough decisions,’ said Mark Galeotti, a London-based lecturer on Russian security and author of the forthcoming book “Putin’s War.” ‘When he doesn’t see a good answer, he tends to get paralyzed. ‘”
All those cheesy photos, bare-chested, on horseback, will end up in the Mullet/Joe Exotic bin.
And it sounds like another wannabe strongman, who cannot get himself to fire anyone in real life, even though the catchphrase from his reality show was “You’re Fired!”
The lesson here is that behind every wannabe strongman is a frightened, insecure little boy. Real men are reserved and quiet. They have nothing to overcompensate for.
And people who blindly follow the strongman – Trump, Putin, but especially Americans ignorant enough to admire Putin – are weak themselves, and looking for some imaginary source of strength outside of themselves, which is in itself not bad, but when it’s some crude Guido shit, they reveal their utter lack of imagination and self-direction.
If I may go out on a limb, this phenomenon happens in a society where people who value physical strength and fitness (often mesomorphs) over mental acuity, are not happy with their life decisions after their golden high school years as quarterback, and that the skinny smart people (ectomorphs) are now making more money.
And speaking of crude Guido shit… this obscenity below presented unironically, not some Borat-level caricature – it’s a strongman’s wet dream, and tells you everything you need to know about the zeitgeist of Putin’s Russia.