Still haven’t decided if this is just an accident, or amazingly good planning.

I swear, I’m trying not to wear out “Orwellian’, but it’s hard.  I’m watching Trump yank the US out of our leadership on every front he can — military, social, ecological, economic, moral, et al — all while regularly butt-dialing another Make America Great Again tweet.  Doublethink is such an obvious metaphor, but I can’t call it cognitive dissonance when Trump seems so happy at the contradiction.

But think about Putin.  Talk about Mister Lucky!  All he wanted was to weaken the US a bit.  Instead, his lottery number came in.

Think about Russia these days.  For all its geographic spread, the Russian economy is smaller than India’s, France’s, or Italy’s economies (no offense, Italians).  The Putin kleptocracy has pushed the huge and resource-rich nation to the verge of collapse.  There’s a decent argument that Putin only invaded Crimea in to distract his people from their economic rush to disaster.

Think of the invasion as something like Trump’s tweets, but with artillery.

And yet, Putin managed to bring down his primary opponent (the US as a world leader), threatened his secondary opponent (NATO), and damaged the European Union to boot!  Not bad for a country he’s personally driving into third-world status.  And he’s kept his popularity impossibly high, all while giving every bit of wealth to his cronies.

Trump must be so envious.