A Thorough Depiction of The Russian Leader

 

The Madness of Vladimir Putin

By Michael Curtis www.americanthinker.com

Throughout history, political leaders have acted in strange fashion, with symptoms of neurosis, trauma, and anxiety. The list is long of those exhibiting some indication of insanity. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon 604-562 B.C., made no secret of his ambition to conquer the world, and saw himself as a deity. Caligula, Emperor of Rome, attempted to appoint his horse to the office of consul. Ivan the Terrible expanded the territory of Russia, created the secret police, and murdered his own son. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin vie for leading personification of hatred, evil, and madness.

Russia this week may remember that madness since it is the anniversary of a speech denouncing a regime of suspicion, fear, and terror. On February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, delivered a speech at the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin as a brutal despot. He revealed the cruelties of the regime, the trials of members of the Politburo, the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934, and the execution of innocent political rivals for that assassination. Khrushchev indicated that in 1937-1938, 98 of the 139 members of the Central Committee of the party were killed on Stalin’s orders.

Madness has often been depicted in fiction. James Bond has confronted Blofeld, Goldfinger, Scaramanga, and other madmen equipped with a white cat and pool of piranhas, seeking the destruction of the world. Perhaps the most well-known and entertaining presentation of derangement is Don Quixote, seeking adventures and attempting to perform deeds of heroism, mistaking a field of windmills for giants and attacking them, and battling a herd of sheep with an aim to exemplify the idea of chivalry. But this middle-aged protagonist mistakes people and places, confusing real and imaginary in his illustration of former glory, inventing problems where they do not exist and unilaterally challenging an innocent party.

The parallel of the lovable Don with the unlovable president of Russia is clear. Vladimir Putin, KGB agent for 16 years, ambitious, ruthless, and vain, is dramatically illustrating questionable behavior by his desire to obliterate an entire country and people, an objective similar to that of Nazi Germany. Western political leaders may have misread Putin, always well dressed with suits with expensive labels, musically talented, proud of displaying physical strength, and with an expensive Black Sea estate.

Because of his previous limited military interventions, the West underestimated his ambition and willingness to use greater force and naked aggression to obtain his goals. His unprovoked war on Ukraine leaves no room for miscalculation about his objectives and the ideology and emotions that drive him. He is an imperialist, backed by violence and toxic aggression, threatening those nations he considers hindering Russia’s actions. The question is whether Putin is completely sane.

“We are not dealing with a sane person” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former Russian oil tycoon. Khodorkovsky, once believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, had spent ten years in prison, 2003- 2013, after a show trial, before fleeing to London. Putin, he says, wants to make Russia great again, and wants the future to remember him as a great ruler of Russia. Putin may see himself as the reincarnation of Vladimir the Great, ruler of Kiev who converted ancient Rus in 988.

This view of mental problems is also suggested in different ways by both politicians and medical authorities. One assertion is by the British defense minister Ben Wallace, who warned that Putin was not in his right mind, and what he is doing is deeply irrational. That accusation of irrationality may be justified in view of Putin’s unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation, his fantasy of conspiracies, accusations of Ukraine planning genocide and seeking nuclear weapons and his absurd accounts of history. Whether Putin intends to seize the whole of Ukraine or to limit his control to Eastern Ukraine and the capital is unclear, but he has displayed himself as an imperialist with fabricated stories of his de-Nazification of Ukraine, and caricaturing its leader as a terrorist. 

These false charges are particularly meaningful for three reasons. One is that Zelensky is Jewish and his grandfather was a Soviet officer in World War II. A second is that Putin speaks of one people, Ukrainians and Russians, “one single whole,” akin to Nazi emphasis on “ein volk.” In fact, Zelensky is a native Russian speaker who grew up in the Russified southeastern region of Ukraine, and who won 72% of the vote in the presidential election of April 2019. Once a comic actor with no experience of politics, Zelensky, now 44, has rapidly matured to lead the fight for his country, displaying striking rhetoric and personal bravery and dignified courage, even symbolically appearing in public in olive green military style T shirt.

Zelensky, in a speech in Israel on December 14, 2021, was prophetic, “we know what it’s like not to have our own state, we know what it means to defend our own state, our land with the weapons at hand, at the cost of our own lives.” He defied Putin, “when you attack us you will see our faces not our backs.”

A third factor is a Goebbels-like spread of disinformation as well as aggression with a coup in Montenegro, assassinations in London and in Bulgaria, attacks in Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and south Ossetia.

Questions about Putin’s state of mind have been raised in the medical world, though there is no conclusive evidence. Is Putin suffering the effects of Long Covid which can affect mental health and may impact his ability to consider risk in policy, which may entail loss of contact with reality, recklessness, inability to make accurate decisions and to experience a fuzzy mind or mental fog? Some doctors suggest the pandemic and physical isolation may have led not only to detachment from reality, but also to hubris, in which the personal and national are identical.

Putin’s actions may also be seen in light of fact that he apparently has a small circle of pollical and military advisers, most of whom are from the KGB of the 1980s, with little military or diplomatic experience. None of them is prepared to dispute Putin’s arrogant view of his policy on Ukraine and ambition to regain it. Mistrustful of everyone, his security has been so tight that people scheduled to meet him spend several days in guarded isolation, and then pass through a tunnel with disinfectants.

But there is now official and general understanding of the real Putin, the man who as a youth ran with street gangs in Leningrad and was eager to join the KGB when he was a schoolboy. It is heartening to witness the increasing response from western organizations to Putin’s loss of touch with reality. Russia is banned from May 2022 Eurovision song contest in Turin, one of the world’s largest televised events, and Russian residents will be blocked from voting in the competition. The soccer Champion League has been moved from St. Petersburg to Paris. The formula One Grand Prix has been moved from Sochi. Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, has handed over the running of the club to an independent organization. For Western leaders the ship of fools is still a useful allegory to represent the problem caused by a political ruler who is not in sound mind.

 

 

Biden Administration -- USA Most Destructive Human Trafficking Organization Ever Devised!

DeSantis Promises This Is Where He'll Send Illegal Immigrants If They Keep Being Brought to Florida

2/25/2022 - Julio Rosas Towhall.com 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe0iH3MnPz0

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) promised if the Biden administration continues facilitating transporting people who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to his state, then he will reroute them to President Joe Biden's home state of Deleware.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, DeSantis noted he banned sanctuary cities in Florida after becoming governor and he is working with the state legislature to obtain funds to send illegal immigrants brought to Florida to be taken to Deleware.

"We are in the process of getting money from the legislature so that if Joe Biden is dumping illegal aliens in Florida, I'm re-routing them to Delaware... we'll do some in D.C. and Hollywood as well," DeSantis said to a roaring applause from the CPAC crowd.

During the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, thousands of families and unaccompanied minors have been allowed to be released into the U.S. with either a notice-to-appear or a notice-to-report to continue their asylum cases. They are often given airplane or bus tickets with money provided by charities, who have been reimbursed with taxpayer money, family members already in the U.S., or a combination of both. There have also been single adult men who were flown in the dead of night further into the country.

Joseph Edlow, former acting director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, testified to the House Freedom Caucus earlier this month that he does not know what authority the Biden administration is using to justify taking single adult males away from the southern border and dropping them off further into the country.

"Why are they not Title 42? I have no idea why these individuals are not appropriate for Title 42...What is the authority then to release these individuals away from the border? There is none. There's no parole authority that exists under law that I'm aware of that would allow DHS summarily release these individuals and put on these flights," he explained.

 

 

The Total Failure of the Federal Government to Address the Nation's Immigration Debacle is Beyond Comprehension!

 

The (Continuing) Border Crisis

2/23/2022 - Byron York Townhall.com

These days, the news is dominated by reporting on the Russian threat to Ukraine, by increasing fatigue with COVID restrictions across the United States and by the continuing rise of inflation. All of those are indeed newsworthy, but another newsworthy subject -- the mess on the U.S.-Mexico border -- is receiving relatively little attention.

Now, there's new word it's getting worse. Much worse. Fox News has obtained new figures that show border authorities encountered 153,941 illegal border-crossers in January. That is almost double the number from one year ago, in January 2021, when authorities encountered 78,414 crossers. And that 2021 figure was more than double the number from a year before that, in January 2020, when the number of illegal crossers encountered was 36,585.

That's a bad trend. And it is almost entirely explained by one factor: the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House, after having campaigned on promises to allow more illegal border-crossers to stay in the U.S.

The new numbers also show that the Biden administration is making good on that promise. According to court papers cited by Fox, in January of this year, 62,573 migrants were released into the U.S. We know that in recent months, Biden administration officials have sometimes given those migrants notices to appear before a court at some point in the (often distant) future and sometimes told them simply to report to immigration authorities when they have time. In any event, initial admission is often tantamount to permanent admission because a relatively small number of those given entrance to the U.S. will end up leaving.

You will not be surprised to learn that the Biden White House is not particularly interested in talking about all this. Indeed, officials appear to be dragging their feet on giving the public enough information to know what is happening. For example, at the end of each year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement releases its annual report on enforcement operations at the border and elsewhere. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the release has come each December for more than a decade; the last ICE report of the Trump administration was released on Dec. 23, 2020.

By that schedule, the Biden administration ICE report should have been released sometime in December 2021. But now it is Feb. 17, 2022, and there has been no release. Here's a wild guess: It contains a lot of bad news for anyone who is concerned about border security.

In the coming days, there will be speculation about what, if anything, Biden might say about the border and immigration during his State of the Union speech on March 1. Certainly, the topic won't be near the top of Biden's priority list. He will undoubtedly devote a lot more time to COVID, about which he is hoping to tell the public that the country can move on from the pandemic after the wonderful job his administration has done. From a new ABC News report: "President Joe Biden is hoping to use his upcoming State of the Union address as a chance to nudge the pandemic into the nation's rear-view mirror."

Maybe Biden can do that, and maybe he can't. But one issue that in no way can be nudged into the nation's rear-view mirror is border security. The public knows it is going badly. According to a Fox News poll last month, just 37% of those surveyed approve of Biden's handling of border security, versus 59% who disapprove. That is consistent with findings in other polls for the last year.

Biden's border failure has also helped define his party. When asked the question, "Which political party do you think would do a better job on border security?" just 40% of those surveyed by Fox said the Democratic Party, versus 56% who named the Republican Party. That 16-point GOP advantage is among the biggest leads Republicans have going into this year's midterm elections.

Finally, Biden's mishandling of the border could damage the Democratic Party's standing with Hispanic voters for years to come. For a long time, Democrats have assumed that they will dominate elections by relying on a growing Hispanic population that votes overwhelmingly Democratic. But now, the party is losing Hispanic voters by the thousands. And part of the reason is Biden's border policy. A Dallas Morning News poll last September found that Biden's approval among Hispanics in Texas was just 35%, versus 54% disapproval, and that those Hispanic voters particularly disapproved of Biden's handling of the border.

It's no wonder the White House doesn't want to talk about it.

This content originally appeared on the Washington Examiner at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-continuing-border-crisis.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.

 

 

A Profound Story About Our Republic Greatest Founder

 

The Twenty-One-Year-Old Phenom -- George Washington

By M. E. Boyd www.americanthinker.com

“There was no way for getting over [the Allegheny River] but on a Raft, which we set about, with but one poor Hatchet...after a whole day’s work. Half Way over, we were jammed in the Ice in such a Manner that we expected every moment our Raft to sink...the Rapidity of the stream threw it with so much violence that it jerked me out into ten Feet Water, but I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the Raft Logs.” The Journal of Major George Washington, 1754.

So much has been written about George Washington regarding his character and steadfastness during the American Revolution, and his full support of the Constitution of 1787, that his young manhood is often forgotten. On this February 22, the anniversary of his birth, think of what he did in 1753, age twenty-one, on a long and arduous 1,000-mile journey through the wilderness from Williamsburg, Virginia, all the way to Waterford, Pennsylvania, just south of Lake Erie, to what was known then as the French-controlled Fort Le Boeuf.

Anything past the Blue Ridge Mountains that run north and south between the original thirteen British colonies and the Atlantic Ocean was wilderness in the 1750s, and very dangerous to those who ventured into the area. People were routinely scalped and left to be eaten by wild hogs. The French, British, and Spanish competed for part of North America at this time, but the crucial Ohio Valley was of especial interest to the French and the British.

In a line of four forts from Lake Erie down what was called French Creek, to the Allegheny River, to the Forks of the Ohio where the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River split (current day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the French took their stand against the British. They were also heavily fortified at New Orleans and envisioned a French trade route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and then to the Atlantic.

So dangerous was this wilderness that one of the French forts, later converted by the British to Fort Venango, was invaded by the Seneca in 1763. All were killed, and the fort’s leader, Lt. Francis Gordon, tortured and then burned to death on a spit over the burning embers of what was left.

In this environment, George Washington, a young Major in the Virginia militia, volunteered to deliver a letter from the British Lt. Governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, to the French Commandant at Ft. Le Boeuf, demanding that the French evacuate the Ohio territory. He was to return with the French reply.

Washington left Williamsburg, Virginia on October 31, 1753, picked up native-American and French interpreters, two baggage handlers, a guide, and two Traders, and then crossed the Allegheny mountains from Cumberland, Maryland (then called Wills Creek) in late November. “[E]xcessive Rains and vast Quantities of Snow...had fallen,” he tells us.

From “civilized” Williamsburg on the East Coast through two ridges of mountains, swamps, soggy marsh and mires, heavy forest, major rivers and tributaries, the party went into the Indian villages of western Pennsylvania. Washington was instructed to counsel with the Six Nations living there and to ascertain the strength of the French presence and the loyalty of the tribes to French ambitions.

 

Image: George Washington as a young surveyor by Henry Hintermeister, painted in 1948. Public domain.

Within the Indian trade center, Loggs-town, Washington explained his mission, and various sachems and other warriors agreed to escort him to Ft. Le Boeuf, six full days away. It was unclear where loyalties really lay for these wily leaders—whether between the British and the French—and, all of a sudden, a young twenty-one year old was in the middle of both a fact-finding and a diplomatic mission of some complexity and danger. As he would do the rest of his life in difficult circumstances—he kept his intelligence, his cool, and his reserve.

I had Orders to make all possible Dispatch...He [a Seneca called Half-King] was not well pleased that I should go before the Time he [Half-King] had appointed.... As I found it was impossible to get off without affronting...I consented to stay.... [T]he French had called all the Mingos, Delawares, etc together and told them they intended to be Masters of the Ohio....When they [the native-Americans accompanying Washington] came in [to Ft. Le Boeuf] they were applied Liquor so fast that they were soon render’d incapable of the Business they came about.... As I found Plots to prevent [his escorts] returning with me I endeavour’d all that lay in my Power to frustrate their schemes.... The Commandant was exerting every Artifice that he could invent to set our own Indians at Variance with us.

So here he is, delivering a letter from his British superior to a French commander who is in no way inclined to be pleased with its contents, in the escort of tribesmen who are being bribed to let him make the dangerous return journey without protection. Washington left with only one escort whom he soon had to abandon with all others in the party because of the weather. Then, with his one guide, Christopher Gist, a back-pack, and a gun, the two proceeded to walk. French Indians lay in wait in the thick forest to assassinate them.

What an adventure. Trekking all night and then a day to avoid being killed, the two finally reached the dangerous and ice-filled Allegheny River and built their raft to try and cross. Without Christopher Gist hauling him out of the water, George Washington would have drowned. “The cold was so extremely severe, that [Gist] had all his Fingers, and some of his Toes frozen.” Finally making it to a Trader’s cabin near Pittsburgh, the pair at last reached safety.

George Washington had survived a very dangerous assignment by Lt. Governor Dinwiddie. He still had the presence of mind, before leaving the Forks of the Ohio for home, to visit Queen Alliquippa, of the Seneca. “[She] expressed great concern that we passed her in going to the Fort. I made her a present of a Matchcoat and a Bottle of Rum, which later was thought the better Present of the two.” His Journal of this trip to the Ohio territory became widely printed and launched an enduring fame centered on courage, dignity, duty, savvy, and good judgment. All this at age twenty-one.

The great Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, wrote this about Washington, 1838:

Among the many valuable traits in the character of Washington, was that of unyielding firmness...he did not appear to despair...a serene unembarrassed countenance...inspiring others with confidence...no distress could weaken their affection nor impair the respect and veneration in which they held him...to this perfect self-possession...is America, in a great degree, indebted for her independence.

All Americans, indebted forever, to this Great Man.