Review: WAR & PUNISHMENT
A window into the dense intersection where Russian history, Ukraine, Putin & Trump meet ...
A few years ago, I wrote about a terrific book titled A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA. While providing a lucid and entertaining history of this important but consistently troubled and troublesome nation, the writer’s underlying thesis was that her history is in a constant state of reinterpretation according to the interests of those in power. While this is true to some extent with every country and people (some call it revisionist history), it is particularly acute with Russia. Whoever is in charge gets to pick their favorite origin myth and begin to create a narrative that fits their personal, national or imperial objectives. It began with Peter the Great, went big time with Catherine the Great and simply turned into pure fantasy with the Soviet Union. Today, an emerging nation, Ukraine, is under siege with thousands dead and incalculable devastation as Putin continues to send to slaughter his own brainwashed soldiers all to satisfy his ambition to restore a Mother Russia that never really existed and, if it did in any form, failed. Unfortunately, Ukraine itself does not stand on the firmest historical ground either as its claim to independence is mostly based on its post 1989 spin-off from the disintegrating USSR. This in NO WAY excuses Putin’s abhorrent invasion and the propaganda that has fueled it. Rather, it is a history lesson in both the confusion that lies only barely under historical surfaces and the terrible power of man’s capacity for mythic thinking.
If you want to do a deep dive on Russian history, Ukraine, Putin and Zelensky with a lot of Cossacks, Poland and Trump thrown in, read WAR & PUNISHMENT by Russian historian and journalist, Mikhail Zygar. It is a miracle that this Russian Kremlin watcher and Putin hater is still alive given the Russian’s dictator’s tendency to kill his critics. This is not an easy book. There are a lot of names to keep track of. There is the complicated cultural, political and physical geography of Ukraine. It appears to suffer from a sloppy translation, and I wish it had a list of names and job descriptions to refer to. Regardless, almost every chapter is one revelation after another. Reading this after watching Trump’s Alaska fiasco with Putin was, for me, a trigger. Many pieces came together and not just about the war in Ukraine.
Trump and Putin connect at an unconscious level. They are mirror images of each other despite all the surface anomalies. They are both FANTASISTS. Putin’s reasons for invading Ukraine and all the other parts of the old USSR over the past 30 years are rooted in an almost childlike embrace of a Russia that failed not only in 1989 but in 1917. Trump refuses to treat him as a murderous delusionist because he, himself, is subject to the same dangerous mindset. What mind is required to insult your oldest most loyal ally with whom you have enjoyed the longest peaceful border in human history? What mind is required to imagine a proud and very old Denmark handing Greenland over to a bronzed real estate developer? What mind is required to think you can end the war in Ukraine without Ukraine’s participation? What mind is required to publicly imagine Gaza as the future Riviera of the Middle East? Any sober, even keeled Congress would be taking a good hard look at the 25thAmendment; however, nothing remotely close is happening. Why? Because Trump the Fantasist was elected by an American public now pickled in fantasy. Up to 15% of Americans are QAnon believers with the myriad of fantasies that come with that cult. Too many Americans believe Elvis is still alive and that there was no moon landing. How can anyone go to that many Marvel films and not think the world is filled with comic book figures. It goes on and on and has always been the case. We are the world’s cult factory. We are the world’s escapist conjurer. We love our drugs, our guns, our video games and our conspiracies. When Lincoln was young, the great obsession was the Blue Man on the moon. The John Birchers were convinced that millions of Chinese were amassing on our Southern border. Georgetown’s Kool-Aid is our national drink, and it took MAGA, Trump and a deeply lost Democratic Party to bring our historically peripheral fantasists home to roost in our nation’s capital. In hindsight, January 6th was the comic opera foreshadowing of the political high jacking of this country by fools wearing horns. While an examination of the roots of this national disgrace is not within the scope of this letter, it is enough to say that it was long in the making. It took decades to get here. It was prophesied by the Founding Fathers and nothing short of a national exorcism (e.g. financial collapse or any one of The Four Horseman) may be required to wake us up. Then again, there’s AI …
I realize this is a vitriolic piece that may not sit well with some of my readers. It was triggered by this brave, tough book and my fear that history’s role in understanding our condition is sliding away, buried by the noise and distraction of a digital world and the shallow, mendacious individuals who have so much influence in it.
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