THE WARMTH AND CHARM OF THE PUTIN INTERVIEW

When Barbara Walters interviewed Vladimir Putin it was journalism, when Tucker Carlson interviewed him it was treason. The cable news propagandists warned that this interview was dangerous misinformation and would crack the fragile eggshell of your mind. The world writhed in fear that the boogeyman of journalism would interview the boogeyman of Russian conspiracy theories. People who have long supported a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine proxy war became excited that perhaps Americans could be educated to the real context and history behind the war.

And then we were reminded that Putin is a boring bitch. If he wanted to rivet Tucker Carlson and the American public, he should have started with the CIA coup of the Ukrainian government in 2014 and followed it up with Kyiv’s shelling of Crimea that killed 14,000 civilians, and then how Ukraine negotiated the Minsk agreements in bad faith. He could outline how the United States and NATO have sabotaged peace talks and extended a war that could have been ended two months after the 2022 invasion. And he got to these points eventually after multiple prompts from Tucker; but not before he put people to sleep with irrelevant ancient history that used meandering racial arguments to justify his recent military escalations. He was so full of himself as a historian that he missed the point of the interview, which was to make his case for Russia’s military aggressions in Ukraine.

I have seen clips of Putin’s alpha male posturing and his bullying of subordinate politicians before -- they grovel and take the abuse because this is not a man you contradict. This came out during the interview as he insulted Tucker multiple times. His authoritarian strong man views came out with his reluctance to release a journalist prisoner. Then there was his idea that he had to “denazify” Ukraine. Nazis in Ukraine have been part of the far-right element of Ukrainian government that are integral to its corruption and anti-Democratic authoritarianism -- but that is still Ukraine’s problem. He cannot purge another country’s belief in an ideology, and likely his real aim is to cast a wider net of mind control that stretches beyond denazification. And he was much too vague on what his final objectives were in the war and would not say he had taken enough territory. Weak case indeed.

The one question I wish Tucker had asked was, “do you have any regrets?” given the huge body count that has amassed over the past two years. I would also like this asked of the Biden Administration that insist on continuing a proxy war they have already lost.

Halfway through watching the interview I had my take in mind and made the meme. But it was late at night, so I waited until the new day to post it. The next morning I was a bit upset to find that others had takes similar to mine and beat me to the punch on posting it. They were on the line of (I’m improving) “the Ukraine war began when Salah begat Eber and Eber begat Peleg.” Or Russell Brand put up a meme that had Putin saying “In the beginning the earth cooled . . .”

I slapped my two-panel meme (the sleeping man part I had used previously to express how bored I was by the Star Wars show Andor) on top of the corner of a Political Compass and posted it on Reddit’s political compass memes sub. As my angle was anti-Putin I got a big reception.

Having a popular meme has to do with timing, finding the right angle and finding the right audience. I did all three here. The meme smashed with 4646 likes, 447 comments and 611 shares. I wish I could see where it was shared and how those shares faired. The great thing about Reddit is the algorithm really lets your posts get out there. The post was seen by 216k people. So 4646 likes is actually a low percentage of that but because the meme got so many eyeballs it got the number of likes it deserves.

Although the flavor of the comments was broadly anti-Russian, the conservative users on this sub did at least have an open mind to non-western narratives, unlike the lib crowd. Some called Carlson a bootlicker, but no one thought it was fair to call him a traitor for getting the interview. Commenters pointed out that Putin looks like he has restless leg syndrome and must push down his own leg, I hadn’t noticed that. Lolz!