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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBTRTN: The Week Reality Smacked Down Putin and Trump
For a long time, on opposite ends of the earth, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have both been living in bubbles in which they can ignore reality, enjoy an alternative universe, and assure their sycophants that everything is just fine. Last week, reality rose and dealt each punishing blows. Born To Run The Numbers notes the many similarities between Trump and Putin:
http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2022/09/btrtn-week-reality-smacked-down-putin.html
Excerpts: "Putin could well now be feeling strangely like Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967. Its one thing when infantry regulars struggle in combat, but when you start drafting ordinary people to fight and die in a far-off war with neither rational nor urgent purpose, their families, friends, co-workers, and local leaders start to ask questions. Start to get angry. Start to act...Watch out, Vlad. Its called groundhog déjà vu. Ukraine is your very own Vietnam. Spoiler alert: Vietnam did not end well for LBJ...
"Yes, last week the same week Putin bowed to reality and called up 300,000 troops -- the ongoing legal case of Donald Trump v. Reality suddenly took several wicked turns in favor of reality. For a while there, it had seemed that Darth Evader would continue to dodge legal consequence for his actions...But reality reappeared in the form of legal rulings that were grounded in the idea that no person is above the law. No one. Not even former presidents.
"All in all, a bad couple of days for the former President and Putin, peas in a pod, pathological propagandists. And, finally, a good couple of days for reality. Perhaps a couple of days, too, that helped us see just how similar Putin and Trump really are. They both follow a propagandists playbook worthy of Goebbels..."
Aristus
(66,380 posts)Afghanistan was Russia's version of Vietnam, and they got pretty burned by it, and it contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. We didn't learn anything from our misadventure in Vietnam, so we decided to double down on Russia's imperial graveyard, Afghanistan.
This is like a bad dream...
dutch777
(3,019 posts)Trump is a pain, Putin is a dangerous threat.
reggieandlee
(778 posts)If Trump gets back in the White House, democracy in the United States will end.
That is not on the same scale as a thermonuclear war that ends humanity.
But it is one helluva lot more than a pain.