Putin's Style: John Wayne Russian Style?

When you think of a man to be reckoned with in fiction one of the best is John Wayne. However, there is John Wayne in a movie and someone like Putin being a Russian version of John Wayne in real life.

This is why everything we have seen Putin do: AID (weapons to ASSad). Aid to Iran. Taking over Crimea. Funding and weaponizing Russian Ukrainian separatists.

Who would have believed all this 5 years ago even though it is right out of KGB training manuals that he studied as a young KGB officer in East Germany in the 1980s.

If you understand the psychology of someone CIA or KGB trained it is something quite different. Because they are trained to crawl through your brain and ideas and come out the other side and then find a way to get you to kill yourself (and this isn't just individuals it is whole ethnic groups). So, if you take a phd in psychology and overlay it with the pharmacopoeia of a good psychiatrist  you get what powerful CIA and KGB training is all about in changing the world. However, you and I might not want to see what it is changed to...

Because it is a never ending process and the results are always going to be unpredictable when applied to 5, 10 or 20 years.

The CIA agent in "Charlie Wilson's War" tells a great story that is the KGB and CIA parable (if you look at history you can see this too since the 1950s).

Here is the story: There was a boy in a Chinese village. He was given a horse and all the people said, " This is wonderful. The boy was given this marvelous horse.So, they asked the Zen master and he said, "We'll See!" Then the boy fell off his horse and broke his leg. Then the people said, "Oh. This is a bad thing that the boy broke his leg." They asked the Zen master he said, "We'll See."

Then a war happened and all the boys of the village except the boy with the broken leg went and they all died. Then the people said, "Oh. This boy is the last one left alive in the village how lucky he is!"
The Zen master said, "We'll See".

You get the idea. The point is something might seem good or bad around the world but one never knows what other outcomes will happen if you apply Chaos Theory to it. Life isn't completely ever predictable after all. Something good can turn out badly. Something bad might turn out good.

The problem is time goes on and on so what is good one day will turn into something bad the next. This is life as it really is which is why Descartes philosophical saying is important, "There is nothing so bad that no good may come from it and nothing so good than no bad may come from it."

This is life as it really is: accept this truth and we are somehow saved by it. Reject it and life breaks us in two. Life is always a paradox.

But, if you show compassion to both friends and enemies like the Tibetans suggest it might be the best. The Tibetan saying is:
"Through time friends become enemies and enemies become friends." So, it is in your enlightened self interest to be compassionate both to your friends and your enemies as a result if you want to survive your life. (And have your children survive too).