Many tyrants live amazing lives as incredibly powerful individuals and die heroes to their people. Unless you believe in some kind of after-death consciousness, it certainly seems a win for the tyrant.
Admittedly, the survey and statistical data on Tyrants and their beliefs / trends is a little weak, but it does seem the natural progression of "I'm now the Tyrant of this Country".
It's gone well for him so far. He's assassinated dissidents, whistleblowers, and reporters before, with seeming impunity. He colludes with other tyrants who are butchers and oppressors and is lauded for it. The west still treats him with kid gloves and more often than not fall prey to his machinations like the naive idiots they are.
He had an OpEd in the new york times and people ate up his phony ass rhetoric with a goddamned spoon.
Remember when Mitt Romney said that Russia was perhaps the greatest geopolitical threat to the west and everyone laughed in his face, said the cold war was over, and called him an idiot? People seem to have a vested interest in deluding themselves that Putin isn't a bad guy, and that a bad guy in charge of one of the most geoplotically active nations in the world with an enormous nuclear arsenal is somehow not a big deal.
>It's gone well for him so far. He's assassinated dissidents, whistleblowers, and reporters before, with seeming impunity. He colludes with other tyrants who are butchers and oppressors and is lauded for it.
So, he pretty much did what most western powers do with umpunity since age immemorial? Minus threatening, controlling and/or invading non-neighborhouding countries?
No. And let's stop with this moral equivalence bullshit.
Let's draw some stark fucking lines here.
Assassinating your avowed enemies in a time of war, that's one thing. Assassinating your home grown political opponents, that's another thing entirely.
Using the legal system to pursue whistleblowers who probably should be protected, again, that's one thing. Killing whistleblowers, that's another thing entirely.
If you can't recognize the difference then you are actively providing support for some of the most evil and repressive regimes in the world by making fuzzy what should be clear-cut moral boundaries.
>Assassinating your avowed enemies in a time of war, that's one thing. Assassinating your home grown political opponents, that's another thing entirely.
And both have happened. Check out a 20th century history of the Western Europe and/or the US.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the colonial and post-colonial histories of Latin American, the Middle East, Africa and Asia for reference.
Hitler was a small time crook (and Putin an insignificant insect) compared to what the other western powers did (and still do) in such places, from the Congo to Chile.
