Putin on the Brain–Assuming Biden Has a Functioning Brain

Low oil prices, economic malaise (with stagnating GDP and declining real personal income), and demographic decline have combined to enervate Russia, and undermine Russian power. Seven years ago Putin invaded Crimea, and was top of the world, ma!–now he is a peripheral nuisance, far more focused on internal issues and concerns over succession and legacy, with an occasional turn at playing international spoiler.

But he looms large in the imaginations of American Democrats. He is the bogeyman who is the root of all evil. His machinations made Trump president, right? What could be worse than that? To this day, the American intelligence community (proving yet again that phrase to be an oxymoron) claims that he intervened in the 2020 election (yet provides absolutely no factual basis to support that claim). Everything bad in the world, they trace back to Putin. They have Putin on the brain.

Get real people. Putin reached his zenith in 2008: indeed, I can date it almost exactly to 8/8/8, with the invasion of Georgia. Thereafter, the financial crisis and the concomitant crash in oil prices gutted Russia’s economy, and put paid to Putin’s plan to exploit high energy prices to propel Russia back to being a superpower. The succeeding 12+ years have been a litany stagnation interrupted by periods of severe depression. Putin and Russia have been marginalized–objectively, anyways.

But Biden–with a big assist from the handmaiden media that has been flogging the Putin-as-Voldemort line since 2016–handed Putin an opportunity to get attention and twist America’s tail. In an interview with George Stephanopolous, simulacrum president Joe Biden agreed when asked whether Putin was “a killer.”

Putin didn’t miss a beat. He trolled Biden brilliantly. He turned the other cheek, and wished Biden good health:

NEW – "I wish you good health,” Putin responds to Biden after the US president called the Russian president a "killer."pic.twitter.com/SUqxA3c5LF

— Disclose.tv ? (@disclosetv) March 18, 2021

This was no doubt a jab at the fact that Biden is clearly anything but healthy.

He challenged Biden to a debate, mano a mano:

So it looks like the Russian President is challenging Joe Biden to a ONLINE LIVE BROADCAST DEBATE!!!

no censors just an "open direct discussion" pic.twitter.com/gP10rX300s

— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) March 18, 2021

That would be a riot: I would pay large $ to watch that on PPV. And quite frankly, Putin would trounce Biden, even if this “open direct discussion” was in English, given the simulacrum president’s obvious mental decline. And don’t think for a moment that Putin is not well-informed (better than Americans, certainly) about Biden’s actually physical and mental condition, which emboldens them to propose something he knows Biden (or more realistically, his puppeteers) could never agree to. (Ironically, the hysteria over Russian hacking gives great credence to this claim.)

I don’t think Obama did a lot of things right, but largely ignoring Putin was one of them. (Though he was an idiot in trying to play up the hapless Medvedev.) The obsessive attention that Democrats have given Putin post-Obama elevates his prestige and importance far beyond what the correlation of forces would justify.

So Biden gives Putin a perfect opportunity to troll him, and you can’t believe for a second that Vova would pass on it.

The obsession with Putin and Russia is particularly perverse given that the real strategic challenger to the US is China: focusing on Russia is a distraction from the real threat. But whereas Biden believes that deference to “cultural norms” justify giving China justifies soft-pedaling what is arguably genocide and a host of other grotesque repressions orchestrated by Xi, he gives no such deference to Russia and Putin. So I guess only non-white dictators get a pass because of “cultural norms.” Pretty progressive, right?

Putin is a pain. He has malign intent. But whether someone is a threat depends on both intent and capability. Russia’s capability has been waning inexorably for over a decade. Obsessing on intent while capability erodes and the capability and bad intent of another actor (China) grow is idiotic. But that’s where we are. Putin is relevant primarily because Democrat obsessions make him so. Biden’s latest gaffe will only make it worse.

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