One of my coffeebuyers asked WHEN I would send my next “special article”.
Yes, I have been slow. Mea culpa. Maxima.
The main problem has been the article on Putin.
As I researched both his background and accomplishments I found it difficult to get accurate information, with most available information distorted by Western "disinformation" -- more correctly, "malinformation". This includes academic sources also. Almost everything that is taken as "fact" about Putin and Russia in the "West" is fiction— or interpreted in unflattering ways.
Take the famous story about young Putin cornering a large rat that then attacked him causing him to flee! The Western narrative is a young thug abusing animals and finding they fight back. Like Ukraine, right? Subtext is cruelty and paranoia — and …umm.. thuggery. Once a thug, always a thug.
However, Putin told this story as a parable about the dangers of cornering anyone, and depriving them of any choice but violence. Extremism generates blowback.
Hence, his preference for dialog and his gradualism — in the Ukraine, the Minsk agreements, later, the Istanbul agreement.
The “West” does not see the contradictions in their narrative—not even that a fat, angry rat might be a poor metaphor for Western Ukraine— if you want to see it as noble — although appropriate if you understand the Banderites as vermin.
Then there is “Putinism” - to which Wikipedia devotes a long article, with one short paragraph as a sop to those who believe in “objectivity”—faux scholarship. The rest of the article throws “Putinism” in a box with “Stalinism”, “Maoism” and — of course — Nazism. An ‘ism” of Evil.
These narratives also make it difficult to find accurate statistics. Instead, you get figures cherry-picked or interpreted in misleading graphic representations. This, however, explains why the West continues failed policies of economic warfare that only help build the New Russia and stimulate its growth — and why there can be no resolution to the Russia’s War with the West without the collapse of American hegemony and defeat.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Excuses, excuses…..
So, it’s taking time for both articles on Putin and Xi Jinping which I hope will provide a comprehensive overview that you cannot find elsewhere.
However, the first part of the Special Article is about leadership and human nature in large, multi-level hierarchical property-based societies-- it is a mix of philosophy and social anthropology with evolutionary theory thrown in—about 10,000 words. This provides the basis for my analyses of Putin and Xi Jinping.
Why?:
Because there is no such thing as “political science”—which is not “science” of course— despite all the attempts of its practitioners at pseudo science — mainly statistical.
Rather, I believe geopolitical analysis must be “grounded” from philosophical and anthropological points of view, despite the dialectical character of such an approach. “Dialectical”? You get it right — if you do —with a big dose of commonsense—and a lot of luck
So I am rewriting this first part now to reduce the volume and "true" it up—umm…”dialectically”., I will send this first then finish my work on Putin and Xi Jinping whose background and activities are similarly distorted.
I will say one thing: great leaders are not politicians. They are achievers. There is a difference. Politicians are creatures of organizations whose primary purpose is their own existence. Leaders achieve by creating or recreating organizations to serve specific goals and the common good.
Many thanks to “Chris” for his message to me on buymeacoffee.com which inspired this response.
Thanks to ALL of you for your patience!
And, of course, thanks for the coffees which give me power to push the stone to the top of the mountain and start all over again. We are all Sisyphus,
From my own investigation of the available information/Media, as well as psychological assessments of Vladimir Putin, I firmly believe that he is perhaps the most "rational & truthful actor" in World Politics at the present time. He's had a difficult road to hoe these past 25 years and come up against so much resistance (lies and misinformation) from the West (America) and is still beloved in Russia. The West would be better served if it had leaders of his honesty and calibre. But alas, we don't.
That you have found and revealed the depth to which 'western' info/reporting on Putin is essentially myth/fantasy/propaganda is a service to us all, so thanks for taking the time to get this article completed.