The Madness of King Vlad

Credit must be given to the hard right in Australia for dropping Campbell Newman like a stone (mostly), after it became clear that despite (or because of?) his massive electoral majority he was a megalomaniac enemy of freedom. Hopefully they will do the same for Vladimir Putin, who has revealed himself to be crazier than a cageful of loons (note: the following is not verbatim).

Victor Yanukovich is still the acting president of Ukraine, but he can't talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president. Ukraine needs elections, but you can't have elections because there is already a president. And no elections will be valid given that there is terrorism in the streets of Ukraine. And how are you going to let just anyone run for president? What if some nationalist punk just pops out like a jack-in-the-box? An anti-Semite? Look at how peaceful the Crimea is, probably thanks to those guys with guns holding it down. Who are they, by the way? Speaking of instability, did you know that the mayor of Dniepropetrovsk is a thief? He cheated "our oligarch, [Chelsea owner Roman] Abramovich" of millions. Just pocketed them! Yanukovich has no political future, I've told him that. He didn't fulfill his obligations as leader of the country. I've told him that. Mr. Putin, what mistakes did Yanukovich make as president? You know, I can't answer that. Not because I don't know the answer, but because it just wouldn't be right of me to say. Did you know they burned someone alive in Kiev? Just like that? Is that what you call a manifestation of democracy? Mr. Putin, what about the snipers in Kiev who were firing on civilians? Who gave them orders to shoot? Those were provocateurs. Didn't you read the reports? They were open source reports. So I don't know what happened there. It's unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police]. That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don't know. Yanukovich didn't give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don't do it. You'll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn't the first time they've done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people...these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You're not listening to me. I've already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you're not listening. It's not that Yanukovich said he's not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they're not as bad as in Ukraine. The Secretary of State. Well. The Secretary of State is not the ultimate authority, is he?

Putin had become the conservative darling of the moment, partly because he hated homosexuals so openly, and partly because he strode around Russia with his shirt off doing manly things and pretending to be the Baddest Mofo In The World. He was the man with the greatest liberty in the world, the Alpha And Omega Male who old white reactionary dudes could look up to and hope to emulate just a little in their own emasculated lives. Pity, then, that he has been exposed as a paranoid obsessive whose delusions are likely to destroy the Russian economy.

A line can be drawn between Putin's withdrawal from reality and the right's refusal to accept scientific facts in so many fields. Putin has apparently constructed an echo chamber around himself, much like the right do in their media enclaves, with predictably poor results when reality bites. The main difference is that Vlad's got the bombs, two words, nuclear effin weapons okay? Let's hope the Russians love their children too.