--Putin wants to Rebuild Berlin Wall (Zee News, September 8, 2014)
Somehow I don't see how that's going to do it either. World domination will be no easy task.
But seriously, how credible do you think any of these claims about Putin's agenda are? Those making the claims offer no substantiation for how they know what's on Putin's mind.
Frankly, I don't believe they have that special gift. Maybe they are just delusional in their conviction that they can read Putin's mind.
Or are we talking about a bunch of charlatans? Just coincidentally, based on their own writings, these people seem to really dislike Putin. Maybe to know him neuronally is to despise him? Or perhaps it is the charlatans that have some sort of hidden agenda.
I explore this in a serious vein in my book Ukraine in the Crosshairs. In short, what I find is that people making and believing proclamations about what Putin wants fit into two general categories. The first group is made up of people who have political or commercial agendas of their own that are well served by the sweeping denigration of Putin, and, indeed, of Russia itself.
Members of the second group more innocently fall into a trap called "confirmation bias." These people have heard the specious stories put out by the first group and have been taken in by them. As a result, each successive fabrication that comes along is accepted unquestioningly. That's because the story likely confirms a bias that has already infiltrated their thinking. This has been going on for years. Some of the people in this second group are even making proclamations of their own now based on the internalized biases.
None of what I've written here is intended to prove anything positive or negative about Putin's agenda. I have no idea what it is. But what I've found is that the most vocal critics who claim to know Putin's mind are indeed charlatans and liars. I give concrete examples in Ukraine in the Crosshairs.
International criticism of foreign leaders need not necessarily be a malicious activity. Done properly, it can provide useful information for the population at large, and it can constitute constructive feedback to the leaders themselves.
But when the criticism is based upon falsehoods and distortions, it serves no one except perhaps the liars and frauds at the source of the stories. When all the oxygen is being taken up by their fabricated allegations and stories intended to deceive, we lose the chance for constructive endeavor. What a shame that is.
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