Kick It or Lick It
Revolutions eat their own children. That’s the way the ex-ambassador to NATO from the U.S. put it on this Sunday morning after the world was hanging on the edge of their seats during the start of the coup d’etat in Russia yesterday at this time. Kim and I were driving back from Phoenix dragging my motorcycle on a U-Haul trailer. We listened to the Breaking News all the way and it brings up all sorts of interesting thoughts about the world and life in general. We had just been through the area of New Mexico made most famous for its role in the creation of the first atomic bomb that was detonated only a few weeks before the two bombs for Nagasaki and Hiroshima were shipped off for their deadly deployment. And here we were 78 years later wondering whether Putin or Prigozhin is more likely than the other at using part of Russia’s nuclear arsenal to hang on to their fragile edge in retaining or gaining power. The problem with the revolutionary credo in this case is to ask who is the revolutionary here, Putin and his rogue assemblage of oligarchs or Prigozhin with his criminal record and band of 25,000 mercenary convicts that are inclined for the moment to follow the latest “hard man” with an advantage in the power games. So, its not clear who is supposed to eat whom in this Russian Kabuki.
As I sat down to write this piece this morning, I felt the need to watch the news some more (something I try not to do on the weekends, since it is mostly analysis rather than breaking news), but yesterday’s events came on so dramatically and ended equally abruptly, that no one feels like there isn’t yet a second shoe to drop. It feels necessary to stay close to events as they break further. So, I was watching Jen Psaki interviewing people and listening to David Remnick of the New Yorker talk about the events in Russia. Remnick is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his work on Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire and is known as incredibly insightful on the topic of Russia and especially as it pertains to political change in the country. I had planned to call this piece The Death of Stalin as a nod to that great hilarious Armando Iannucci 2017 film by the same name. I am always pleased when my worlds collide, so imagine my giddiness when I heard Remnick reference not only that movie but also Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), when I had just been thinking about Los Alamos and Project Trinity, and had actually just purposefully watched the movie Fat Man and Little Boy to connect my visit with the upcoming Oppenheimer movie about to be released.
As thought-provoking as the nuclear issue is, I am more focused on the political machinations in the clan-like oligarchy that’s holding, seeking, challenging, negotiating and perhaps losing power as the barbaric totalitarian system that grips Russia. Putin himself invoked the historical context by likening the nationally-harmful 1917 revolution and how it undermined Russia’s grip on WWI. What I like about The Death of Stalin analogy is that Iannucci does a wonderful job of humanizing Russian characters who always look totally serious and monolithic. Having Steve Buscemi play Khrushchev or Jeffrey Tambor play Georgy Malenkov and be real and quite funny guys rather than the granite blockheads we see standing on the podium in Red Square during a military parade, give us an insight that is actually very valuable. Art imitates life and this comedy is probably not so far off the reality of the sorts of shenanigans and inane and petty activities that take place in the hidden reaches of the Kremlin every day. I heard Remnick comment that anyone who thinks Putin and Prigozhin are brilliant strategists who play three-dimensional chess, would do well to watch the movie version of the Politburo (now the Council of Ministers) playing practical jokes on each other while they play a deadly game of power brokering where at any minute, joking good humor can turn into bitter and literal back-stabbing.
As we listen to the amazing array of Russo-Global pundits, we hear a recurring theme that they have lost any ability to predict what could happen next. They all seem to be in agreement that yesterday’s events were not only rash and dramatic in their initiation, but even more so in their rapid resolution. No one believes Prigozhin is finished and yet everyone sees this as the beginning of the end for Putin. Putin himself said in an interview with Keir Simmons that what the world wants from its leaders is a blend of “predictability and stability”, and here he is in a moment when his prior “chef” or “caterer” has both unmasked the Russian visage of predictability and shown the current regime as being even more unstable than it was suspected to be. In other words, in 24 hours, Prigozhin has gone from a noisy mercenary irritant to the military hierarchy in Russia to a direct globally-recognizable and very scary contender to Putin’s throne. If there is a betting line in Vegas on Putin and Prigozhin, they are likely how long either will last in such a volatile and tentative state as they are in this morning.
When I think about these events and liken them to Stalin and his inner circle jockeying for power while being sycophantic one moment, brutal the next and jocular the moment after, it is hard for me not to think about how the world does in an era of strong men, which we seem to be passing through. The historical fact is that all strong man cease to be strong at some point and their strong man ways promotes a cadre of mini strong men underneath them and around them. It is primordial predatory behavior that can be seen in wolves or any other pack animals and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that we are supposed to evolve beyond that as thinking humans. But apparently, we have to be reminded every so often that we are still just animals.
And then I think about our politics in this country and I posit that one side of the aisle is busy trying to replicate the antics of the Russian oligarchy with all the sycophancy, back-biting and power-grabbing while the other side of the aisle is working hard to take a more enlightened and less animalistic approach. Think of it, Prigozhin is a convicted criminal who is generating cheers on the road to Moscow. Trump’s polling numbers against one of his sycophantic cadre, Ron DeSantis, are up remarkably since his indictment on 37 counts of mishandling confidential and national security oriented documents. It makes me wonder whether Trump more admires the totalitarian power politics of Putin, who has a trail of “accidentally” dead competitors in his wake, or the ballsy strong man and no-holds-barred Prigozhin, who has mobilized social media to his populist advantage. It must be tough for Trump to know who to admire more, all while the lives and future of the Russian people are being toyed with like they were in Stalin’s day. What Republicans find admirable about that sort of approach to leadership is impossible to fathom.
Beaten children beat their children. Thugs who rise to power through thuggish ways fall to other thugs that want what they have. Remember the movie City of God, set in the favellas of Rio, when we watch a twelve-year-old junior thug take over the local gang from the sixteen-year-old thug by killing him. The movie ends when a five-year-old thug who sees no issue in taking risk, takes over by killing the twelve-year-old thug leader. Is that where we are going? One childish thug to the next? I heard one pundit describe Prigozhin and Putin’s relationship as the classic Mafia relationship where you have to constantly choose to kick it or lick it, with reference to the ass of the lead dog in front of you, or else the view for you will never change. That seems to describe Russian events well and Republican Party conduct as well.