There are two things you can count on in this whacky 21st-century world. First and foremost, not a day will pass without some genius rocket scientist Putin expert telling us what the Russian president really wants. The other thing you can set your watch to is the relentless fear-mongering about how the Russians will soon invade “X” – you fill in the blank country or region.
I’ve done media analysis before on the propagandizing against Vladimir Putin and Russia many times over the last 5 or 6 years. Most recently, in an NEO article entitled “Vladimir Putin Wants You to Do Your Own Thinking – That’s All,” I brought to the forefront the New York Times’ relentless harping on Putin’s alleged intentions. But a July 28th The Daily Signal story proves there are more idiots west of Russia’s borders still willing to believe anybody but Putin knows what Putin wants. Get this lead from Daniel Davis:
“Military aggression is no surprise coming from Russia—it’s what Russia’s been doing for generations. But Americans might be surprised to learn the motivations behind that aggression. What’s going through Putin’s mind when he invades Crimea and wages war in eastern Ukraine?”
Davis uses this to lead into an interview with Nolan Peterson, The Daily Signal’s alleged foreign correspondent. Before I go too far in describing Peterson, maybe the reader can get the gist from his answer to Daniel Davis’ first question about Russians’ opinions on the Trump-Russia investigation. Peterson comes up with this genius evaluation of Russian opinion:
“Well, I think that you know, one thing we should understand about the Russian government is that they fundamentally see their country in a conflict with ours.”
No! You don’t say, Nolan. How on Earth could Russian leadership ever see America’s interests conflicting with Russia’s? As if NATO creeping up on Moscow, 50 tons of economic sanctions, constant military drills, and a trillion-dollar media war against Putin was not evidence enough. Read and/or listen to these bobbing heads yourself, I know there’s a chuckle in it for you. My issue is not with political and ideological retardation, but with the fact that almost 3 million people tune in for this nonsense every month. And you thought UFO lizard people and Chupacabra fantasy take the tabloid cake.
This Paterson fellow actually believes the conflict in Ukraine is not resolved because the Kyiv junta dug in with trenches outside the Donbass region like the French and British in World War I. Really, I am not kidding. These fools think Russia actually invaded Ukraine and got stopped by Petro Poroshenko’s hapless UKROPS. Sorry, I said I would get off the numbskull Putin experts.
Let me say this about most of the “Putin experts” I read from on a daily basis. Nine of ten are either CIA spooks, military jarheads, paid hacks who are the recipients of think tank grants, or people vested in business that depends on conflict with Russia – or some combination thereof. In Peterson’s case, he’s touted as a former Air Force special ops pilot who got a McCormick Foundation fellowship. I’ll say this for the Ukraine embedded adventurer above most other Putin haters – he’s at least got a commendable physical record in triathlons and such. It’s too bad that even stalwart Americans fall into playing the fiddle for the liberal world order – but they do.
Looking at the McCormick Foundation, this non-profit sticks out like a sore thumb because of the foundation’s background with the military-industrial network. David L. Grange, a retired United States Army Major General, was the foundation’s president from 2005–2009, a poster boy for the Arab Spring clandestine operations in Libya versus Muammar el-Qaddafi. I’ve no space here for digging into Grange’s ties to Hillary Clinton and his Osprey Global Solutions military contracting business, but we all know American wars equal profit.
At the other end of the ludicrous spectrum, right-wing Trump evangelists conjure up notions that somehow Vladimir Putin made puppets out of the Hillary Clinton mob. No, I am not kidding. Read this story at American Greatness (yes there is such a media outlet). “Putin’s Patsies” attempts to appease American redneck Russophobes while at the tame time letting President Donald Trump be the superhero of renewed American vigor. Author Ned Ryan tries to weld the metal of Russia’s president to the flammable pink marshmallows of liberal America. Let me quote for you here:
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the dossier, just as I opined on Fox News back in January of 2018, is a Russian misinformation campaign meant to destabilize the United States and part of a wider effort by Putin to destabilize western democracies.”
-Drumroll-
To summarize here. Wasn’t it Franciscan friar William of Ockham (Occam’s Razor) who said: “The simplest solution is most likely the right one?” I mean, what if Vladimir Putin was just worrying about the problems of Russia and making geopolitical contingencies for whoever won the U.S. presidential elections of 2016? Given the fact that Trump only really beat Clinton on a technicality, do either of of the numbskull theories presented in my report make sense? Is it more likely that Putin would be lying awake all night long scheming in some 4-way-split comedy right out of a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie? Or, do you think the smartest politician in the world was just waiting to see America implode all by itself?
Sometimes I try to imagine what it’s like to be Vladimir Putin. I get these visions of his right-hand man Dmitry Peskov provoking laughs and looks each morning at an 8 AM briefing. In my Kremlin fantasy moments, I see the dapper salt and pepper mustached Peskov laying the morning reports on Putin’s leather-topped desk as he utters; “Don’t look now sir, they finally figured out what you want.” I’ll leave you to imagine the look on the Russian leader’s face after that. And I bet I am closer to knowing that some think tank bozo in Washington.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”