Putin’s speechifying with tacky green screens, stadiums, and rhetoric that sounds (in translation) exactly as dumb as Trump’s is both depressing and scary. There, but it the grace of a marginally saner constitution go we.
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Tackiness is a test of power. It’s the authoritarian daring you to call them out on the flimsiness of the theater.
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It certainly seems like Putin has a predilection for calling attention to the theater. But also, tackiness is a better look for a strongman; it facilitates the claim of solidarity with the "the real people." The worse things actually are, the more necessary this fiction becomes.


