Vladimir Putin: Hero or Heel

I just don't get it. Maybe I'm getting too old and was born too long ago (1946). How can so many Americans, believe anything Putin or any other Russian leader from the old school says? You can take the boy out of the KGB, but you can't take the KGB out of the boy.

I have to admit that I was taken in by his charm also. For the first two years of his presidency, I thought the Russian people finally had a chance at a future. Sure, the men were basically lazy alcoholics (thanks to the Soviets), but the women were in a significant part highly educated. They went to college because they were not allowed decent jobs. My wife has two degrees. A lot of these women have since fled Russia for elsewhere, especially the U.S. If Russia is so great, why have the people (men and women both) left in such droves (there are over 21,000 in Baltimore); freedom of course!

That brings up another point. How many women do you ever see in leadership roles under Putin's reign? Answer that, please.

One of the criticisms you can have for Bush is that (at least for appearances' sake), he still believed Putin until recently.

In the beginning, there were business and agriculture reforms, private ownership was extolled, etc. That didn't last long; just long enough for Putin and his thugs to position themselves.

Back in 2000-2001, we watched TV6 on Russian TV until they made one too many criticisms of the regime and it was put out of business, its people scattered or scared, or both. There is no freedom of the press there anymore, not even the modicum of the first few years. The deaths of so many reporters insured that.

What disturbs me the most is the ease at which so many of our people disrespect the United States. Even if I understood the hatred for President Bush, how does that translate do the hatred of our country? Of course this didn't start with Bush; it began with the Vietnam War, and quite frankly is down-right discouraging.

This current election should load up all levels of government with Neo-Libs as a backlash to the Republican failures to be true to their beliefs, and reach across the aisle too often. Loading the congress with more of these people should plummet its rating to even lower depths, already far below Bush's. Like it or not most Americans are conservative by nature and simply want to be left alone to work, keep their pay, raise their families, and admire and defend their country. That is a hard pill for a lot of you to swallow.

Tzar Putin is well aware of the mental state of the American public and I guarantee you, he will play it for what it's worth.

He is no hero to most Russians, especially the hungry multitudes. He is only a hero to the socialists and Neo-Libs of this country. This is quite interesting when you consider he isn’t even a socialist or a communist. There is no talk of wealth redistribution, or equalities of the peoples over there. It is the Russian people “be damned” (and the rest of the world too).

He is simply a power-hungry narcissistic megalomaniac, whose drive has no bounds. His supporters are toadies wanting the table scraps, and those too fearful to resist.

Don’t buy into this crap,

The Hammer


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