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.
Hereâs how we sourced many of our vehicles:
Another car dealership would receive a car on trade-in for, say, $500.
Theyâd mark it up to $250 and send it to the auction.
This old Lebanese guy would buy it at auction for $750.
Heâd 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.
Heâd clean and buff it to perfection and mark it up $250 for his time.
Weâd buy it for $1,250, spend a bunch of money on repair work so the car would run great, then weâd mark it up to $2500 and sell it to our customers.
Okay, now letâs talk about Nazis.
As Adolf Hitlerâs rickety body and drug-addled mind paced back and forth in the FĂŒhrerbunker, he lost all touch with reality.
The Nazis won the race to build an atomic uberbomb, but they couldnât figure out how to actually drop it aerially. Still, Hitler kept telling the German people that âat five minutes past midnightâ, 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?
Didnât he have the smartest, sharpest German minds at his disposal? Didnât 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 Hitlerâââin the end, Joseph Goebbels murdered his own six children before offing himself.
In fact, one manâââMartin Bormannâââwas the ultimate chokepoint who controlled the information that reached Hitlerâs 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 âon their wayâ 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 werenât even close.
In the end, eight million German citizens lost their lives because of one man.
Okay, now letâs do Putin.
Last week, Vladimir Putin got on Russian TV and told his people that the âspecial operationâ 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 theyâd lost just 498 troops.
It was this exact figure that caught my attention.
498?
Why not âaround 500?â Surely they canât 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 didnât fudge the numbers in the slightest? In a first wave that we now know is full of conscriptsâââinnocent 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 arenât 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 canât find that last body anyway. Maybe theyâre still alive out there somewhere.
Instead of ten tanks lost, they say nine. Instead of a squadron lost, they say itâs 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 Russiaâs 100,000+ army under-report by just one fatality apiece, thatâs thousands of unaccounted men.
My point here isnât 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 thatâs exactly how the last Russian dictatorship fell?
We are only as good as our information, my friends.
Thatâs why people delusionally believe in Q-Anon.
Thatâs why people delusionally believe in rules-free-market capitalism.
Thatâs why people delusionally believe in unlimited wealth accumulation.
Thatâs why people delusionally believe in Democrats and Republicans.
Thatâs why Vladimir Putin delusionally believes that Ukraine is his land.
Thatâs why Vladimir Putin delusionally believes the war is going great.
Thatâs why Vladimir Putin delusionally believes he can re-assemble the Russian Empire.
To be clear, Vladimir Putin is a pathological liar (heâs a politician, after all.)
But heâs also being lied to.
Because he created a culture of lies.
Right now, Russian police officers are checking young peopleâs phones to make sure theyâre not learning the truth about Russiaâs invasion. Theyâve evidently never heard the famous Victor Hugo quote:
âThere is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.â
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 fĂŒhrerbunker.
And thatâs probably how his story will end.