Start with what cannot be found outside of the mind of the malignant narcissist, i.e., the traumatic memory of “Narcissistic Mortification”. Diminishment. Humiliation. Shame. Whatever it was–a bullying theft on the street; an instance of sexual abuse by an authority or other overwhelming power; a “Jack and the Beanstalk” beat down by a parent–would have set off two related processes: covering over the moment and making of it either a terrible personal secret not to be shared or, perhaps, a complaint to shadow and ruin the life (for Putin, one might choose the former option, i.e., compartmenting the trauma); and splitting off the invention of a noble and undamaged self abetted by deceit in the creation of an heroic personal theater.
Most of us toughen up some with psychic injury, adjust our behavior to avoid a repeat experience or engage from a position of greater determination to prevail with dignity and strength. We’ll talk back to the nasty, speak truth to power, or dare introduce the bully to punishment as we produce greater force or response in relation to the presence of the same.
Chin up, in other words, and walk a little taller.
The malign might demand greater compensation in the way of power and emotional assurance. It may not be how they are or might be as ordinary persons that matters: it’s how they look–how others may perceive them–as extraordinary personages that matters most, for deep down they are still hiding their own humiliation and the dreaded fear of its return.
And how may one hide the truth?
Lie about it.
And how may one control the perception of others?
Create around or before them sufficient convincing theater to get them to do as one’s image may demand.
Punks have an easy list at their disposal: cheat, deceive, lie, and steal.
Get her a ring–who cares how you do it?–if it comes to that.
🙂
The personal and smaller matters lend themselves to convenient chicanery.
The corrupt and evil among politicians know more difficult strategies: big lies, deflections; false accusations, false flags, false presentations.
Where Putin lives, notch it up with military, paramilitary, and secret police forces tasked to manage state-devised compromise and reflexive control operations as well as total perceptual control buttressed by the methodical elimination of all of the sources of competition and criticism.
And should anyone in the darkness and shadows fuck up . . . cover it up–practice helps–and lie about it.
And should anyone possessed of integrity observe and report what has taken place, well, there are ways in which politically criminal and ruthless power may choose to defend its good image while in fact engaged in the most execrable evil.
A Few Reflections on Putin’s KGB Manual Updated to Support State Capitalists
I’m sure there are other similarly clever methods for developing bear hugging personal relationships and influencing nations, quietly, and from behind the curtains, and as sources, insights, and opportunities develop, I may add to the above useful instructions.
The West had perhaps thought the Cold War over on December 25, 1991 with the announcement at noon of the Soviet Union’s dissolving itself in bankruptcy, but here with are with a post-Soviet KGB/FSB President Putin in power who while demonstrating his idea of logical reasoning repeatedly proves himself barbaric, inhuman, and irrational and only best in his expression of unhelpful and wholly destructive madness. He appears to have no insight as regards his own malign and narcissistic disorder, but his army knows it, his generals see it, his inner circle suffer for it and none appear able to stop him.
For Ukrainians, who are but the latest to catch Tsar Putin’s cross-hairs, the question comes up as to why EU/NATO so far refuses Ukraine offensive weapons sufficient for controlling its air space. The Atlantic Council circulated a germane answer in the form of a survey of experts and simple chi-square chart, and this morning when both plea and question came up on Facebook, I felt bound to respond.
From the Awesome Conversation
In what follows, I’ve added URLs where they would be otherwise absent in plain text.
Out of laziness, perhaps, I’ve chosen to plant surprises, helpful ones, in the URLs and forego the creating of standard reference (a “Related Online” section has been otherwise a BackChannels desktop publishing tradition).
Here’s the thinking regarding NATO’s official avoidance of war with Russia beneath the black cloud of Mutually Assured Destructed attached to any exchange of nuclear weapons and related and possibly out of control (worse: computer-controlled, according to Putin) escalation.
Note: Russia boasts two related threat assets: 2000 “tactical nuclear weapons” and fast-and-crooked (rather like Russia’s leadership itself) “hypersonic missiles“. Both may be easily looked up online.
Where the United States has forsworn first use of a nuclear device, Russia’s mafia-style doctrine has gambled on a smaller is larger option–and it is because the world has this smaller-leverages-larger nutcase getting everything he wants predicated on his demonstrations of ability to launch wars by proxy, his show of barbarism, especially in Syria (now Ukraine, and who’s next?), his support for “frozen conflicts” and terrorist organizations, and his employment of methods of political blackmail and compromise (look up Jeffrey Epstein’s visit to Moscow) and intimidation, he presents before all the challenge of shutting down what he would regard as his life’s work, piece of ____t that he is.
The first steps have been to erode his financing, hit his backers, and get Mother Russia — i.e., someone more authentically representing her — to take care of him.
The medieval world hates the modern–and His Malignance hates what he cannot absolutely control and plunder.
Update: An Argument for Increased Ukrainian Surface-to-Air Defenses
Thousands of Ukrainians are continuing to express support to European integration and protesting against decision of Ukrainian government to refuse signing of association with EU in Vilnius. 27 November 2013. Kyiv, Ukraine.
March 5, 2022: In the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian army seized 30 units of Russian equipment.
“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets. There is only one reason. We want to be free from a dictatorship. We want to be free from the politicians who work only for themselves, who are ready to shoot, to beat, to injure people just for saving their money, just for saving their houses, just for saving their power. I want these people who are here, who have dignity, who are brave–I want them to live a normal life. We are civilized people, but our government are barbarians. That’s not a Soviet Union. We want our courts not to be corrupted. We want to be free . . . .” Posted to YouTube by A Whisper to a Roar, February 10, 2014.
Unfortunately, cluing in the world to yesterday’s news and Russia’s blood-and-soil religious fantasia might be easier.
To such elites, all of whom fall on the spectrum of Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic, WEIRD for short, Putin represents an atavism whose motivations they cannot understand. The Kremlin strongman adheres to a distinctly throwback view of international relations where the use of force is normal, and countries protect their national interests unapologetically, with all the instruments of national power. Putin’s wholehearted embrace of religiously-infused nationalism, which boasts a venerable history in Russia, leaves WEIRDs befuddled yet has real resonance among average Russians. Western doubts that the former KGB man has “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” miss the point, but then the West has never understood Russian Orthodoxy very well. No matter what Putin really believes, his public embrace of religiously-grounded national conservatism provides his regime with an ideological anchor, one which happens to view Ukraine’s subservience to Russia as a spiritual as well as geostrategic necessity.
Perhaps EU/NATO should have seen this coming with the truth about 9/11 (i.e., where terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri spent winter 1996-7 courtesy of the KGB) and the reflexively controlled “New Nationalism”.
Of course, Plausibility in no way neutralizes Deniability.
However, add at least one or two sideshows.
On the same day gun rights activist Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent, the president stressed his support for gun rights at an NRA meeting.
Okay, no biggie, but Butina most certainly chose to target with her charms a most conservative institution representative of not only America’s heartland but its gun-and-hook and healthy outdoor and clean living heart.
From major flag-bearer of democracy Anne Applebaum:
in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.
So, in my best Orwellian: Trump Medieval! Pence Modern! And “Pompeo Medieval!”
The Cold War–the west’s struggle against Russia’s Soviet Union and its Communist Party–has been regarded as having ended on December 25, 1991 in relation to the bankrupting of the state in relation to its defeat in Afghanistan in 1989.
With relation to America’s national security interests and international peace, what arrangements were made between the United States and Russian security cultures in 1992?
I have no answers for that.
America’s wacky political paranoia, however–more for entertainment than righteous cause, some portion of Americans has loved The X-Files, made pilgrimage to Area 51, and bought in on UFOs–has also produced a notorious anti-Constitutional Administration (2016-2020) — with its Head of State fully entangled with Russian money — and has done so in defense of lost eras and lost powers.
What happened back there — in 1992, perhaps — to bring us to this passage with a now former authoritarian American president steaming in the wings while a deeply disturbed and piratical Russian power in the figure of one Vladmir Putin makes a mess of modern Ukraine?
I have been breathing for 15 seconds after the last question mark, and I still don’t know. 🙂
However, we of EU/NATO geopolitical space have seen in action Russia’s Active Measures, Cyber Warfare, related Destabilization Measures, Hybrid Warfare, and the twists of a “New Nationalism” accompanied by authoritarianism and mafia drift in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (add France in the making of a big deal about Marine Le Pen) — and on this day a warning and perhaps a bid from Russia presaging nuclear warfare.
What are the obligations–ethical, moral, and legal–attending the watching of a crime in process that may be stopped by main force followed by extraordinary strength in defense?
First, the rescuer must survive the disaster too! 🙂
Then comes the business well known to those for whom the preemptive strike has been a requirement, not an option.
As I chatype and type, Russia’s invading assets would seem to be racing toward NATO on rails in Belarus and out on the highways and streets of Ukraine . . . in other words, out in the open.
For all intents, post-Euromaidan Ukraine has demonstrated steadfast devotion to becoming part of the western assembly of open democracies bound beneath credible constitutions and related rule of law while Putin’s Russia has chosen the stance opposite, i.e., a state devoted to a capricious dictatorship and rule of force.
Marina Agaltsova, a lawyer with the Russian human rights group Memorial, said those who did protest were extremely brave, adding that “Russians are deeply terrified of arrests and court trials over rallying people to go out and protest.”
Human rights activist Marina Litvinovich urged Russians not to cry and “not to be afraid, but to just come out and say that they are against the war,” in comments on social media. Calling on people to protest is an offense under Russia’s restrictive laws.
Perhaps I urge fools to rush in, and NATO is no collection of fools, although one may one note the post-9/11 turns toward authoritarianism or polarization in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Nonetheless, as Putin’s Push comes to shove, the reaffirmation of the security compact appears accomplished. The question at hand would seem to be not “If” but “When” as regards the timing of an engagement. BackChannels may assure readers of this much: Putin, as often as he may get away with this simple dance, will offer NATO hope as regards relief from attack–and then he will take it away. Brutally. Time and again.
So why wait for the monster to finish ravaging Ukraine and positioning his forces on NATO’s eastern flank before stepping into to end that dark carnival of carnage and destruction?
Putin practices treachery, he deceives, lies, and steals through the betrayal of trust: would it not be fit, would it not be best, to play him in kind?
Brest, #Belarus, a few kilometers from the border with Poland, the NATO country. All equipment is marked with the letter V. We are asking Belarusians to send us information🇷🇺 troops.
By deploying the troops on the border with Poland, Putin also wants to threaten NATO pic.twitter.com/AiqSifZQOZ
Я обращаюсь к вам, люди #России. Еще не поздно. Хотя много зла уже сделано, еще не поздно все это остановить. I appeal to you people of #Russia. It’s not too late. Even though much evil has been committed, it’s not too late yet to stop all of this. pic.twitter.com/1PLBSAROPg
"There are no NATO troops on the ground… that causes some bitterness here…the President has often said, when it comes to this fight it is the Ukrainians who are doing it. So you have the most advanced of NATO weaponry and the most basic of patriot resolve" @bbclysedoucetpic.twitter.com/24dvGW3Up3
Putin has cause to believe he has the edge in defense and energy assets as well as global positioning and latency or staging (as global defense assets existing in peace may be turned toward war with an order). As “gifts” to the developed world, Putin also has 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and a number of hypersonic (hard to hit) missiles, and at the very least, he will plant those assets on NATO’s border to sustain his program of intimidation.
By the west’s measured response to Putin’s aggression, it is merely enabling the same while giving up on its principles and values by keeping itself in the respondent mode when the more powerful option, which will come due, will be to seize the initiative and take Putin’s power from him–and, frankly, that for the sake of the Russian People too who have been deeply subjugated by Putin’s governance.
Posted to YouTube by The Guardian, February 24, 2022.
Guardian News, February 24, 2022.
11Alive, February 24, 2022.
“War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Bliss” plus Putin’s own additions: “Chaos is Order / Life is Death”.
Early today, Vladimir Putin AKA “Vladolph” AKA “Putler”, Russia’s President by way of assassinations, defenestrations, detentions, and rigged elections, launched his invasion of Ukraine, a young democracy on its western flank, turning back the clock to the 1930s and and further to feudal-medieval barbarism.
President Biden, February 24, 2022.
PBS NewsHour, February 24, 2022.
Ukrainians flee to Romania via border crossing in Chernivtsi Region in Western Ukraine
Blackmail/Kompromat, brutalization, espionage/infiltration, frozen conflicts, international kleptocracy, mass perceptual control, reflexive control, terrorism | x Russia or x KGB x FSB or x Vladimir Putin–you get the idea regarding the dimensions and evils faced by the world’s authentic democracies–and aspiring ones–and their constituencies in relation to Russia’s international character and operations.
The following and very few references may promote greater general curiosity (so one may hope) about Russia’s–and Putin’s Russia most of all–and its avaricious, barbaric, and generally ignoble role in international affairs.
The late historian Richard Pipes noted that Russia sustained a definition and test in sovereignty from which Europe chose to depart as it worked its way out of the medieval zeitgeist. While reading (most likely Russia Under the Old Regime), I did not take the note for citation, but it came down to this: the test of sovereignty in Russian absolute terms involved the ownership and treatment of property and persons as alike, and proof of that power could be found in the sovereign’s ability to destroy either at will and with impunity (my words, not Pipes’).
In Reference, A Glance Into Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its Black Soul
“Moscow will be happy, of course, to host dozens of international conferences, and will periodically suggest that a solution is within reach. But at the end of the day, its interests are best served when Iran, Hezbollah and Assad are in power to make mischief in the region, because that’s when Russia’s influence with the Europeans, with Israel, and the Gulf States is at its peak,” he said.
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