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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
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Meanwhile On Grad
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Are you implying Putin's own writings and statements come from the State Department or something?
The State Department wants you to feel strong animus and contempt toward Putin, while remaining ignorant and incurious respecting the more general political maneuvering and historical developments.
In particular, it wants you to feel distracted from US imperialist atrocities and ambitions for imperialist expansion.
Writings and statements normally will not be fabricated out of whole cloth, as overt lies, but they will be presented as cherry picked and obfuscated, serving as a distraction from deeper issues and broader background.
Why would I care about what it wants or what it wants specifically in your opinion? How much do you even know of Putin? What role did the US government play in how he came to power, including the 1999 apartment bombings, his handling of the Kursk disaster, as well as the Beslan and Moscow hostage situations? What role did it play in Putin's political opponents being killed and persecuted even in the earliest years of his presidency? And his Ozero friends from before his presidency that would become filthy rich from corruption schemes involving the government? And his disdain for uprisings and the power of the people formed when he personally witnessed the protests during his time in Dresden? Let's start there, before the Munich speech, the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, influence and sabotage operations across the US and Europe, military involvement in Syria and Africa, wide-scale crackdown and killings inside Russia itself, and so forth.
It is certainly in your interest to be conscious of others seeking that you be duped or manipulated.
The wealthy and powerful constantly deploy their massive resources to deceive the public into following a path that benefits those on top while keeping the mass of society repressed.
The long history of the US lying to its own population to justify overseas wars offers only among the most obvious examples of deceit being employed by the privileged in favor of the privileged.
As crises and discontent escalate around the world, the catalyst for such interests to create distractions from the real problems only becomes more substantial.
Overcoming such challenges begins with our recognition that effective solutions will not be handed down from above.
I have found it particularly ironic that Americans constantly lament the foolishness of trusting the government, yet they follow hook, line and sinker whenever state interests align with the public being made fearful of yet one more enemy.
Is it only the US that lies? Or do others do it as well?
Putin is many times wealthier than any US president, including Trump, and he certainly has more power from over 26 years at the top than any of those temporary figures. So yeah, best to follow your own advice and focus on the bigger picture. Moreover, as it's been implied in someone else's comment, the victims of Russia in a country like Ukraine who have to hide away in bomb shelters and bury their friends couldn't care less about your take on the NWO. They don't need to be told who the enemy is. They can look outside.
None of my explanation carries any relation to the relative wealth of Trump versus Putin.
You clearly are not understanding, and seeming so almost deliberately.
The bigger picture is that political struggles transcend any lone individual, isolated antecedent, or narrow objective.
If you want to discuss, please try to do so without relying on a straw man.
Seriously? This thread began with you bringing up current political struggles, to which I reasonably replied by bringing up Ukraine as an example of one frequently discussed by tankies. From there, you've derailed and strawmanned by failing to address the points and resorting to a form of "America though" every single time.
My general observation is that you have placed yourself between two deceiving narratives, while also boldly framing yourself and neutral and enlightened.
One the one side, you have adopted a narrative of unification and homogeneity across a group you call tankies. On the other side, you have promoted the narrative constructed by Western states, most notably the US, and propagated through Western media, for the purpose of cultivating popular domestic support for their own expansionism.
Tankie is a term coined by leftists to discredit other leftists. Most generally, the usage has remained as anti-authoritarian leftists attacking authoritarian leftists, but the term has no fixed, precise meaning, and has been widely abused due to its vagueness and obscurity. As for authoritarian leftists, attitudes do vary considerably. Taking for example attitudes respecting the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, some are vulgar campists who glorify strongmen and deny atrocities, whereas others simply acquiesce to the painful reality that conflicts involving US imperialism always end in massive devastation, even while no credible antagonist of the US is itself driven by virtue. The latter is broadly shared by most serious leftists, including libertarian socialists and democratic socialists, who are also broadly critical of all authoritarians, including leftists who are authoritarian.
Specifically attacking tankies from a standpoint of reaction is counterproductive. Reactionaries obviously demean all leftists, but very rarely, at most, offer any characterizations that are accurate.
The dialogue that is promoted by you and this community is similarly counterproductive. It wastefully exaggerates the threat of the groups you criticize, and it promotes broad conflations whose primary effects are to amplify antagonism and to poison the discourse. A much more serious approach to engaging leftism would be first learning and acknowledging the varied positions within and between distinct leftist tendencies, and then considering which specific positions you are inclined to accept versus to reject.
More generally, discuss ideas, instead of attacking people or generalizing groups.