Constituents beneath the sway of dictators, secular or religious, don’t understand that these guys — and there are an awful lot of them around the world — don’t have an off button if and when they start to break the conventions that contribute to civil and democratic society. Corruptions, intimidation, suppression, theft, and murder is what they’re about, and although they rant different, the truth of the matter comes out with such as the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei. You cannot kick that triad apart except by taking aim at the core and shared “malignant narcissism” possessed by each and mutually defended beneath the banner of political absolutism.

______

I now have tropes for these guys, my favorite when comparing Assad to ISIS: “Same player on both sides of the chess board: different talk — same walk.”

And it’s true.

The middle and moderate within the Syrian constituency: subjugated or displaced; dead or maimed; or, somewhere, fighting the good fight against Assad and the al-Qaeda affiliates both.  Either way, The Despotic has been “winning” for some years now.

Elsewhere, in Russia and in Turkey, the leadership merely falters when forced and otherwise, whether President Putin or Prime Minister Erdogan, goes right on with the glorious and grandiose program and script in the head.

Of the two, Erdogan appears to have been kept more in check by his post-Kamalist constituency.

Putin, with whom I identify in various ways — I’ll never own one, but I like mansions too —  has with his relationships with Assad and Yanukovych, with his now long history of state abuse of the court system (Khodorkovsky) and election system (ask Kasparov about that), and much else (ask the journalism community — and start with Luke Harding), he has worked himself into a political posture from which he cannot retreat.

Putin may have had his Great Guy moment during Syria’s chemical weapons imbroglio, but after so much barrel bombing by Assad, it’s fair of me to “call them the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei”.

# # #