this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Let's not go back to pretending Putin is smart again please. They are both bloated, arrogant pieces of shit that surround themselves with yes men and don:t care for reality until it hits them in the head.
I mean... Putin is far, far more intelligent than Trump.
Yes, they're both arrogant, brutal bullies, surrounded by yes men... but, to keep with Trump's metaphor, Putin can actually correctly read most of the cards in his hand, and can actually manage a poker face.
Trump on the other hand, correctly understands maybe a single card in his hand, doesn't realize he is constantly accidentally turning and angling his cards so everyone can see them, drops a card or two every 30 seconds, and is also completely convinced he has the greatest poker face in the history of poker faces, when in reality he has near 0 ability to hide his true expressions in an actual adversarial situation.
Saying somebody is smarter than Trump is like saying somebody smells better than a skunk. It applies to everybody.
I'm not sure it applies to the people who voted for him.
Agreed lol.
3 day special military operation... Two invasions? Yea Chechnya wants a word
Any time the "anti-terror" police does work? The russian demographies maybe? Or the fact that outside of the oil russian real growth has been sinking?
Putin is a dick-tator. He thought the EU would back down on Ukraine, he "read his cards" incorrectly.
He's having to beg china for help since the russian industry would collapse without their assistance.
The really important point here is that idiots are very capable of doing extreme harm. And we need to take it seriously even if they are stupid, just don't portray them as something they are not.
I don't disagree with you, but let me put it this way:
When I say 'Putin can correctly read most of the cards in his hand?'
'Most' just means 'more than half'.
But yeah, stupid people with great power are very, very dangerous.
Kind of... the whole point of a democratic government is to be able to have internal abilities to check and block the stupidity of any one person, and make power be more diffuse...
But when that breaks down or is subverted, you go back to very powerful, often very stupid people in charge.
The difference is that in this case, Putin has a plan and an end goal of sorts. Trump is just hitting buttons on the controller at random.
Trump has all kind of pieces that don't look regular but it is still possible to play chess with them.
Nixon tried to be perceived as a mad man. Bush played a Texan. Can we be sure that Trump is dumb?
I mean is he not smart? If anything it seems his career as a dictator has been wildly successful.
You know how musk got to his position by being rich? Putin got to his position by being born into upper politicial class and getting a cushy kgb job in the soviet era
Then he won an election by promising to give his new oligarch friends a lot of stuff for their sponsoring of his campaign.
I don't know enough about 2000s Russian politics to contest that statement, but his destabilization of Europe and takeover of America don't seem like things you can do by just being rich.
Buy bots to spread all the anti-establishement narratives? Spread misinformation of all kinds just to see what sticks? It's not really a 5d chess move. It's just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. Even getting lucky with it.
In that case why isn't everyone else as successful? I doubt Iran or China lack the funds but I don't see Trump swearing fealty to Xi Jinping.
Yet.
What time is it?
Because putin inherited the kgb machinery that he helped to build, which was explicitly designed to undermine any non-russian power base globally.
Showing him using actual chess pieces doesn't mean he's smart. You don't have to be intelligent to play chess. But, yeah, I think most people associate the idea of chess at all with high intelligence.