The latest news about Russia from New York and Washington is chilling, ominous, and more diabolical than ever before. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is now in complete control of U.S. President Donald Trump’s mind. The Raw Story is, the Russian president has managed to infiltrate the teeming grey matter of America’s chief executive. The implications are mind-boggling, to be sure.
I should continue this real news story with brilliantly contrived fabrications, for it’s for certain, the world will believe anything these days. What if a noted geopolitical analyst (like me), wrote for a well thought of geo-policy think tank news media (like NEO), that the real “Putin Plan” truly is world domination? Maybe the New York Times would even pick up on a Putin mind control project in a lab deep beneath Mount Yamantau is a mountain in the Ural Mountains.
Truly, if the Washington Post got wind of Putin’s “real plan,” Jeff Bezos’ creative writers would conjure up Slavic sounding scientists clad in new U.S.S.R. lab coats as they filled test tubes with neuronal cell bodies, neuropil, and other brain particulates. In fact, I am a bit surprised the brilliant minds along Think Tank Row in Washington, have not already brought to light Putin’s rehabilitation of Bunker-42, Stalin’s anti-nuclear retreat 65 meters beneath the streets of Moscow. But then, I am not sure how Putin’s devious scientists manage their dark experimentation while tourists visit the Bunker-42 museum? Perhaps there’s a secret wall operated by a secret lever, that leads to a secret chamber, where super-secret mind control experiments are carried out? Or not.
Now, let’s depart just a little bit from fascinating fantasy. The point of all the media, political, strategic, and cultural mumbo-jumbo concerning Vladimir Putin is this. The enemies of Russia made Vladimir Putin Forbes magazine’s most powerful person in the world. The “legend” of Vladimir Putin grows each passing day. TIME made Vladimir Putin superhuman with stories like “The ‘Strongmen Era’ Is Here. Here’s What It Means for You.” And the world’s most famous newspaper, The New York Times helped propel the Russian president to greatness far exceeding any leader in recent history. This recent story by opinion columnist, David Brooks chronicles how Putin reversed Russia’s disintegration, and how the former KGB officer has actually altered history. Brooks proposes that “in the years ahead Putinist authoritarians will have several key advantages in the war of ideas.” And THAT, my friends, is real power.
Now that we understand the real synthesis of Vladimir Putin’s rise to prominence, the idea of the son of a World War II war hero just doing his job is easier to imagine. You see, Putin did not seek out this monumental fame, as some analysts would argue. The “quest” for a rebirth of the Soviet Union was never in Putin’s real plan. What if, instead of buying into the Hollywood version of Putin, we envision a fairly humble person? What if we understand a man whose real intentions were to deliver the country of his father, mother, and of his two long-deceased brothers who is striving to do what was expected of him? Wouldn’t a story of patriotism and necessity make a powerful novel or motion picture? Well, we cannot, and this is our biggest problem.
In the David Brooks story, I mentioned we find the best type of propaganda on Earth. A skilled storyteller will mix truth with metaphor, and metaphors with scripted philosophy in order to “convince” readers. And Brooks does a stellar job by revealing Putin on the one hand and then labeling him as the diabolical idea that opposes ultra-liberalism – which is, in turn, the only ideal worth striving for. But, as brilliant as Brooks and The New York Times can be, they are stupid beyond historical precedent. Because of the zeal and madness, the liberal order stampedes us all with, Vladimir Putin will end up being equaled by only such men as Caesar. Think about this.
Without invading anyplace, having not even stamped his foot in anger, Russia’s Putin became the reluctant Caesar of his time. The ruler of the world’s biggest country, the man who dominated a million headlines, the Czar that 1,000 think tank geniuses and a hundred billionaire oligarchs detested, he took over the spoken, written, and televised word. And I have not mentioned who is the most important man at any meeting table he sits at. The kid from St. Petersburg, the guy that is not that tall, he has been transformed into Napoleon by the hatred, greed, jealousy, and stupidity of hundreds of thousands of so-called experts. If we were watching Star Wars Episode I, Vladimir Putin would be Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Darth Vader:
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
People, all those professing to know Vladimir Putin in western media and politics, they are either liars, stupid, or both. Ian H. Robertson Ph.D. wrote for Psychology Today, “The Danger That Lurks Inside Vladimir Putin’s Brain,” and the good doctor is a perfect example of someone trying to reverse cause and effect to affect a result. The danger in Putin’s brain is not dangerous for American, Russian, European, Asian, or Latin American citizens; it’s dangerous to the ruling elite that would swallow up the rest of the world. Robertson, and hundreds like him, try to leverage their doctorates or congressional status, in order to perpetuate their own goals. Meanwhile, they unwittingly create a legend, Vladimir Putin as Caesar, Napoleon, or Alexander the Great. And we are the willing perpetrators of the myth, the epic rise of a man to the status of an emperor of the modern mind. He rules not only Trump’s mind, but the collective one as well.
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.”