Is Vladimir Putin Lying or Is He Being Lied To?
Is Vladimir Putin Lying or Is He Being Lied To?
Here's the honest truth about outrageous falsehoods
Many years ago, I used to work at a used car dealership.
Here’s how we sourced many of our vehicles:
Another car dealership would receive a car on trade-in for, say, $500.
They’d mark it up to $250 and send it to the auction.
This old Lebanese guy would buy it at auction for $750.
He’d drive it back to our city and mark it up $250 for his time.
A young gangster-looking dude would buy it for $1,000.
He’d clean and buff it to perfection and mark it up $250 for his time.
We’d buy it for $1,250, spend a bunch of money on repair work so the car would run great, then we’d mark it up to $2500 and sell it to our customers.
Okay, now let’s talk about Nazis.
As Adolf Hitler’s rickety body and drug-addled mind paced back and forth in the Führerbunker, he lost all touch with reality.
The Nazis won the race to build an atomic uberbomb, but they couldn’t figure out how to actually drop it aerially. Still, Hitler kept telling the German people that “at five minutes past midnight”, Germany would vanquish the Allies and achieve their destiny.
Hitler became so delusional that he ordered military maneuvers and entire divisions to defend Berlin that had been completely wiped out months earlier. He literally spent months playing in a bunker with imaginary divisions.
Why?
Didn’t he have the smartest, sharpest German minds at his disposal? Didn’t he have brilliant tacticians, clear-eyed realists, people that loved ice-cold facts who could give it to him straight?
No.
Hitler was surrounded by two types of people:
Smart people who were terrified of their suicidal maniac master.
Idealogical sycophants who were just as delusional as their boss. In some cases, these men were even more insane than Hitler — in the end, Joseph Goebbels murdered his own six children before offing himself.
In fact, one man — Martin Bormann — was the ultimate chokepoint who controlled the information that reached Hitler’s desk.
In his final days and weeks, Hitler experienced the opposite of mark-up.
His information was severely marked down.
The smart-but-terrified Germans knew they could be executed for being the bearers of bad news, so they fudged the numbers.
Instead of saying that Division X had been completely wiped out, they spoke in generalities or said the divisions were “on their way” to Berlin. They underestimated and under-reported the number of casualties. They promised the nukes were just days away from deployment, when in reality, they weren’t even close.
In the end, eight million German citizens lost their lives because of one man.
Okay, now let’s do Putin.
Last week, Vladimir Putin got on Russian TV and told his people that the “special operation” in Ukraine is going super great.
He told them that everything was proceeding on schedule.
He told them everything was going exactly as planned.
He told them they’d lost just 498 troops.
It was this exact figure that caught my attention.
498?
Why not “around 500?” Surely they can’t have an exact figure amidst this mayhem. They can barely keep their supply chains and lines of communication open. They accidentally shelled the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, for crying out loud. 498? Please.
And then it hit me:
This smacks of mark-down.
The same day Putin told his people that 498 of their boys had died, Ukraine announced that their army had killed 5,840 Russians.
Is there likely a bit of Ukrainian mark-up going on here?
Probably.
But the Russian death toll is certainly well into the multiple thousands and climbing higher by the hour.
So what is going on here?
Does Vladimir Putin know that the corpses of 5,000+ Russian boys are now decomposing in Ukrainian soil?
If yes, where would he have received that information?
From his generals.
Where did they get it from?
From their lieutenant generals.
Where did they get it from?
From their major generals.
Where did they get it from?
From their brigadier generals.
Where did they get it from?
From their lieutenant colonels.
Where did they get it from?
From their captains and majors.
Where did they get it from?
From their second lieutenants.
Where did they get it from?
From their sergeants.
Are you telling me that every single person all the way up the Russian chain of command didn’t fudge the numbers in the slightest? In a first wave that we now know is full of conscripts — innocent teachers and locksmiths and translators who were forced to fight and are just trying to stay alive?
Are you telling me not a single person maybe rounded down their count to avoid the wrath of their tyrannical superiors?
Remember, this is a regime that has no problem deposing its own men. If the guys on the ground aren’t moving as quickly as commanded, or capturing targets as fast as planned, or losing far more lives than expected, it is in their best interests to play down the devastation.
So eights deaths get reported as seven deaths, because maybe they can’t find that last body anyway. Maybe they’re still alive out there somewhere.
Instead of ten tanks lost, they say nine. Instead of a squadron lost, they say it’s just missing for now but will probably report in soon.
Remember the size and scale of armies here: If a third of all platoons in Russia’s 100,000+ army under-report by just one fatality apiece, that’s thousands of unaccounted men.
My point here isn’t to argue the exact numbers in any way, but simply to say:
We are only as good as our information.
Does Putin know the protests in St. Petersburg are growing?
Does Putin know Russian workers are striking because of the ruble collapse?
Does Putin know Russian protestors are fighting their own cops in the streets?
Does Putin know the Russian economy now faces ruin?
Does Putin know that Russian mothers are starting to protest, and that’s exactly how the last Russian dictatorship fell?
We are only as good as our information, my friends.
That’s why people delusionally believe in Q-Anon.
That’s why people delusionally believe in rules-free-market capitalism.
That’s why people delusionally believe in unlimited wealth accumulation.
That’s why people delusionally believe in Democrats and Republicans.
That’s why Vladimir Putin delusionally believes that Ukraine is his land.
That’s why Vladimir Putin delusionally believes the war is going great.
That’s why Vladimir Putin delusionally believes he can re-assemble the Russian Empire.
To be clear, Vladimir Putin is a pathological liar (he’s a politician, after all.)
But he’s also being lied to.
Because he created a culture of lies.
Right now, Russian police officers are checking young people’s phones to make sure they’re not learning the truth about Russia’s invasion. They’ve evidently never heard the famous Victor Hugo quote:
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
The unstoppable idea in Russia right now is the truth.
And lies will only land you in a prison of your own making.
Vladimir Putin is now so cut off from the outside world that he might as well be pacing back and forth in a führerbunker.
And that’s probably how his story will end.