Simple-minded media propaganda - like the claim Russia's Putin is deranged - is precisely what brought us to the crisis over Ukraine.
How convenient for western leaders that every time another country defies the West's projection of power, the western media can agree on one thing - that the foreign government in question is led by a madman, a psychopath, or a megalomaniac.
At a drop of a hat, western leaders are absolved of guilt or even responsibility for the terrible events that unfold. The West remains virtuous, simply a victim of the world's madmen. Nothing the West did was a provocation. Nothing they could have done would have averted the disaster.
The US may be the most powerful state on the planet by far, but its hands are apparently always tied by a deranged, implacable foe, like Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Putin, we are told, is not advancing any rational - from his perspective - geopolitical or strategic interest by invading his neighbour Ukraine. And so no concession could or should have been made because none would have prevented him from acting as he has.
The West, meaning foreign policy hawks in Washington, gets to decide when the timeline of events started, when the original sin occurred. The compliant western media give their blessing and our hands are washed clean once again.
The subtext - always the subtext - is that something must be done to stop the "madman". And because he is irrational and a megalomaniac, such action must never be framed in terms of concessions or compromise - that would be appeasement, after all. If every enemy is a new Hitler, no western leader will risk a comparison with Neville Chamberlain.
Instead, what is needed urgently, western politicians and media agree, is the projection - whether overtly or covertly - of yet more western power and force.
Unmitigated CatastropheThe US and British invasion of Iraq nearly two decades ago is a particularly pertinent and telling counterpoint to events in Ukraine.
Then, as now, the West was supposedly faced with a dangerous, irrational ruler, who could not be made to see sense and was unwilling to compromise. Saddam Hussein, western leaders and their media insisted, had allied with his arch-enemies in al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the Twin Towers attack of 9/11. He had weapons of mass destruction, and could launch them towards Europe in 45 minutes.
Except, none of that was true - not even the madman bit. Saddam was a hard, cold, calculating dictator who, like most dictators, kept himself in power through a reign of terror over his opponents.
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