An analyst on the news said that Putin’s goal is to occupy the territories that used to belong to the Russian Empire. This is a dangerously uninsightful analysis.
Restoring the Russian Empire is Putin’s first step. His eventual goal is for Russia to become to the world in the XXI century what the US was in the XX. If you listen to the Russian propaganda, you will hear the following ideas repeated ad nauseam:
1. The US has entered a steep economic, political, spiritual, moral, intellectual, etc. decline. It is rapidly losing its influence on the world arena, and nothing can prevent it from becoming a backwards, insignificant country with no global importance.
2. A new world leader is urgently needed, and nobody can play this role better than Russia.
3. Russia has an exceptional degree of culture and spirituality, which makes it much better than the stupid and materialistic Americans and unintelligent and nonspiritual everybody else.
4. It logically follows from this that the world will be better off from being guided by the people whose language is the most beautiful, whose culture is the most cultured, whose soul is the most spiritual, and who have been, across centuries, the only consistent force for good on the planet.
Welcome to the new world order, everybody.
Clarissa's Blog 
Let me rephrase that: “As people of impeccable integrity, we want a license to do all those immoral things done by the US!”
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Well, it makes sense that people with a mysterious soul should be given more license than people without one. 🙂
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Well now you leftie ass hats are in a pickle, aren’t ya? You’ve treated the military like crap for years, you voted a black moron into the Whitehouse, and now that the Russian Bear is waking up, all you can do is huddle in fear or make lame threats.
Putin knows idiots when he sees them and he has judged you and your leaders correctly. Hate to say it but his world order is going to beat yours handily.
Enjoy the ride assholes. You earned it.
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—you voted a black moron into the Whitehouse…,
Thank you, o Russian internationalist, for blessing us with your dignified presence. 🙂 🙂
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This guy is from Edmonton, Alberta, by the way.
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“This guy is from Edmonton, Alberta, by the way.”
Which is comes as very little surprise to those of us who have spent inordinate amounts of time in Alberta.
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Putin is full of shit.
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And it has started gushing out of him with a vengeance.
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Actually, Canadians are unusually prone to racially motivated outburst in my experience – to a much greater degree than Americans, or even most western Europeans.
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Anecdotal evidence. How compelling.
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Canada is a country that officially designates people as “visible minorities.”
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“Canada is a country that officially designates people as “visible minorities.””
– Yes, that’s true. However, after 5 years in Canada, I entered the US for the first time and was absolutely shocked and traumatized by the naked and vicious racism that permeated every single space. And that was the state of Connecticut. I can’t even imagine the magnitude of the contrast with Canada had I entered Missouri.
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How is this relevant? The United States has a designation “people of color”.
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“4. It logically follows from this that the world will be better off from being guided by the people whose language is the most beautiful, whose culture is the most cultured, whose soul is the most spiritual, and who have been, across centuries, the only consistent force for good on the planet.”
So Putin is a Sinophile?
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He is not, but he will be. Eventually. 🙂
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What do you think of Julia Latynina? I haven’t read/heard of her before a reference on another blog.
A nice theory attributed to her (don’t know how accurate it is) concerns the difference between totalitarian states (China, USSR for a long time, Nazis) that genuinely believe(d) they can assume leading positions in the world and invest heavily in education and infrastructure versus cynical parasite states (Saudi, Venezuela, Russia) who no longer (or ever) believe such a thing and content themselves with passive incomes from resource extraction spent on gaudy consumer goods for the ruling class (a dispiriting collection of non-entities and filth who rise through corruption and negative selection). Elections are easily won by selectively distributing goodies to the large have not class and state employees.
From this description Putin isn’t an authoritarian, he’s taking on the guise of a full fledged soviet totalitarian who actually believes in inherent Russian superiority (or is he simply trying to put a totalitarian face on the one note Russian economy?
Just found this by her: “It turns out that it is the West, not Putin, that is living “in another world.” This is a world in which good-natured, civilized people argue that the use of force has no place in international relations and are therefore powerless to cope with those who believe otherwise” (get out of my brain, Latynina!)
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Latynina is a very talented journalist. She has been writing really insightful, very courageous articles about Putin’s regime for years. Many of the things I have been writing on this blog were influenced by her. I differ from Latynina in that my vision of what is happening in Russia is not as dark as hers. But then I don’t live in Russia.
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