Eliminating the competition?
[Note 1. Like all my blog posts, even my ones on writing, this is op-ed. As such, I get first crack at expressing my opinions on things—I have lots of them, but you can only write so much! But, because they are only my take on a current event or news item, you might not agree, so anyone can comment, even Mr. Putin! Note 2. I apologize to my friends on Facebook, where I usually share these posts. Facebook has made it impossible to share. You can follow me on Google+. I recommend cancelling your Facebook accounts and creating Google+ accounts, if you haven’t already.]
How many of these conspiracy theories do you believe? Apollo never landed on the moon. Bill Clinton had Vince Foster murdered to cover-up an affair between Hillary and Foster. LBJ arranged for the murders of the Kennedy brothers. Communist sympathizers hired John Hinckley to kill Reagan. Putin ordered the Russian SVR to poison ex-spy Alexander LItvinenko. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner ordered special prosecutor Alberto Nisman murdered. Putin ordered the Russian FSR to hire someone to assassinate opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.
Some of these raise eyebrows, of course, because they trend toward UFOs and little green men. The two that might cause some people to nod sagely are the Putin and De Kirchner references. Why? Because both Argentina and Russia have long-standing and violent fascist traditions associated with oppressive oligarchies. No matter what leaders of these countries say, you’ll always have doubts. While the U.S. isn’t necessarily beyond hanky-panky like this, we find it harder to believe, although fiction writers like me can make such things seem real (Clancy’s advice in the quote you see in the banner of this website). Everyone loves a good conspiracy in mysteries and thrillers, but just maybe Argentina and Russia are a little too real?
I reported on the Argentine case in a previous post, so I’ll focus on Vladimir. A recent news report conjectured that Russia’s strongman has Asperger’s. There are two things wrong with this diagnosis. First, it implies that Asperger’s sufferers are psychotic sociopaths like the Russian strongman. Asperger’s is an autism spectrum disorder ranked as 70 on a severity scale. I can’t see it for Mr. Putin, but I’m no autism specialist either. I do know he’s a ruthless, greedy, and power-hungry man who out-maneuvered Mr. Nemtsov for the Russian presidency. Second, Asperger’s isn’t consistent with Volodya’s narcissism (Volodya is the nickname for Vladimir—I made my arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin much more human than Russia’s de facto dictator, though). Putin’s vain and suffers from an inferiority complex, characteristics he shares with Hitler. Moreover, his past association with the KGB, a band of psychotic torturers and murderers, from Beria under Stalin to today’s present-day FSR and SVR, doesn’t need Asperger’s to explain his paranoid violence.
Russian power brokers, from the czars to Putin, have been more like Cosa Nostra than true leaders. The head of “the family,” sometimes Premier, other times President, is just the Mafia Don, but Kremlin leaders are the ones in charge. Even Putin has to answer to them. They have ruled Russia forever. The iron fist of the Communists was just a version on an old theme. Russia has always been an oppressive feudal society run by overlords. The wink and nod to democracy and “free elections” is just a distraction, more of a PR campaign for the Russian people and the rest of the world. Ukraine shows that Russia hasn’t changed at all from the Soviet Union—it’s still a colonial, fascist power. Invade Poland (Hitler); invade Ukraine (Putin)—it’s all the same thing. Americans are right to believe that Russia is enemy number one. After all, they have enough nukes to turn America into nuclear glass. ISIS, in comparison, is small potatoes, although Putin has his own problems with Islamic terrorists and might have them with ISIS eventually.
Putin employs all kinds of tools in his attacks on the West and his own people. In my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” readers have learned that Detective Castilblanco and his TV news reporter wife wanted to adopt some Russian kids, but Putin nixed that. While my characters are fictional, Putin’s policy change isn’t. Americans no longer can adopt Russian children, a decision that’s more characteristic of a spoiled brat having a tantrum than someone with Asperger’s, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
The change in Russia’s adoption policy is small potatoes compared to the Litvinenko case. This was an SVR assassination, pure and simple, and the method used, radiation poisoning, was horrible (SVR is the successor to the KGB acting outside Russia). But the two cases illustrate the wide range of death and violence Putin can employ in dealing with his enemies. And this paranoid psychotic believes his enemies are everywhere. That’s not Asperger’s—it’s simply a reflection of a centuries-old Russian psychosis. Always feeling threatened and always with an inferiority complex, the old Russian nobility spoke French in their courts instead of Russian, mimicking the French aristocratic dandies of the time. How ironic that Napoleon almost beat the crap out of them (his mistake, attacking in the Russian winter, was repeated by Hitler).
The Communists tried to rewrite history so that Russians invented everything and made all scientific discoveries (always write the name for the Russian overlords with a capital C, because they didn’t push anything close to any of the perceived benefits of communal and socialist living—they were fascists, nothing more). (While attempts to rewrite history happens in the U.S.—for example, by the Boards of Education in Kansas and Texas—it isn’t usually official government policy.) Putin carries on this official inferiority complex, except he now probably wants to create his own place in history (his narcissism) rather than rewrite it. The distinction doesn’t matter much; what Putin opines is law, until the other Russian overlords give him the heave-ho.
Putin knows he’s walking a tightrope, of course. He learned in Chechnya that he can only go so far before even the submissive Russian people start questioning his actions. It’s hard to see your sons and daughters die all the time (mostly the former in the Russian armies, because only the spy services are gender neutral, and they’re all homophobic, like Putin)—Russian forces, often ill-equipped and technologically inferior, have suffered many casualties throughout history (millions in World War Two). His present Ukrainian adventure might appeal to the illegal Russian immigrants in the Ukraine and a few patriotic souls who, like Putin, yearn for the days when Russia was, or thought of itself as, a world power. But Russia’s economy is in the toilet, and it’s basically a Third World country. Despots from Argentina to Venezuela, all through the Middle East (e.g. Saudi Arabia) to the Far East, and elsewhere are starting to learn that bad economies bring discontent, unrest, and revolution. Putin’s days might be numbered.
Until he’s ousted—I’d prefer a forced retirement with four bullets in the back to match Nemtsov’s demise—Putin will continue to dance that tightrope. He might even survive the Nemtsov case. After all, like De Kirchner, he’s running the investigation and has absolute control over how much is done to find the murderers and what is released to the public. Of course, if he really wanted to find Litvinenko’s and Nemtsov’s murderers (and how many more?), all he’d have to do is look in the mirror.
And so it goes….
