• vfreire85@lemmy.ml
    2·
    6 days ago

    i will just make here a small correction, on the sense that i personally don’t believe that putin and the russian elites live in some sort of hyperreality. i do believe that they assess reality, but one can question this assessment. however trump and his cronies really shat on their pants because they truly freaked out on a small denture on their shining armor: people questioning why the u.s. is the way it is, people organizing, making strikes, protesting against racism, and then of course luigi happened. they totally freaked out because they didn’t wanted to even have the “nightmare” of being toppled down of their positions (economical, social, etc.)

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      I think I agree with you but maybe didn’t explain my stance so well.

      Putin and his immediate orbit are … largely, but not entirely, successfully creating a hyperreality for everyone else to live in and experience, they purposefully engage in it as an intentional tactic, to sow confusion and chaos around everything, and then at least project into that chaos that they are stability.

      Trump and his immediate circle… are too fucking incompotent to engage in creating a hyperreality as an intentional tactic… in the sense that they actually believe in half of the insane bullshit they throw out into the world, and they are not actually capable of projecting themselves as that island of stability.

      Putin and co largely do not live in the hyperreality they create, at least not anywhere near to the extent Trump and co do.

      Putin usually knows when he’s lying or promoting an utterly dubious notion.

      Of course there are some utter nonsense ideas that Putin seems to truly believe, what with his personal idea of how Russo/Slavic history, and identity actually work, and his initial vast overestimation of the capability of the Russian military.

      But Trump… doesn’t even know enough, in most instances, to even know if he is intentionally lying or not.

      Trump himself is to a much greater extent, completely lost in the hyperreality he initially created, and can no longer wield it as a political/psychological weapon/tactic with intentionality.

      To torture a metaphor:

      Trump is lost in the sauce, utterly drowning in it, Putin just has a daily foot bath in the sauce.