Here’s another parallel between Putin and Trump. Both are opportunistic, greedy, self-aggrandizers who have nonetheless managed (they are skillful propagandists) to convince great numbers of people that, no, despite their appearance of privilege, they are actually—like the aggrieved folks they have been “sent to save”—VICTIMS of globalists and perverts and corrupt, satanist forces “out to get” ordinary good folk—i.e., southern evangelical white nationalists (in the US) and the long-oppressed, fascist-threatened masses of the non-western world (in Russia and India and Venezuela and China). In Trumputinland the bad guys are identified as the western “liberals” and “progressives” who oppose both a) Putin’s brave efforts to “take back Ukraine,” (on behalf of Mother Russia, to whom it clearly belongs) and b) Trump’s heroic struggle to “take back America,” (on behalf of Christian dominionists, to whom it was given by God). Trump and Putin, on the other hand, are portrayed as the good guys in this holy war against the evils of Enlightenment values and American/NATO hegemony. They may win. Never underestimate human brutishness.
