Under the veil of communism, Putin is trying to globalize kleptocracy, autocratic systems through which powerful heads of government appropriate the resources of a country for their own purposes. For kleptocrats, enough is never enough. They think of themselves as the anointed with those underneath existing only to serve superior beings, John Galt (“Atlas Shrugged”) on steroids.

For whatever reasons in his unrewarded childhood, Trump has been drawn to kleptocracy. He and Musk are entirely unconcerned by those underneath them, a perspective made clear by Musk when he said that empathy is the fundamental weakness of Western culture, drawing on Gad Saad’s theory of suicidal empathy, diminishing oneself by caring for others (Rogan Podcast). 

In Saad’s terms, Musk imagines himself as privileging his empathy for culture over individuals, a bit of a rabbit hole through which exploiters can justify exploitation of their neighbors. These economic aristocrats pretend they are working for the greater good of humanity by fighting against regulations that protect the masses from price-fixing, global warming, pollution, and social integration (DEI programs). For kleptocrats, democracy is a downer, an ideology that redistributes to the takers the property of the makers (Paul Ryan, 2010 [a quote Ryan subsequently disavowed]), without whom humanity would stagnate. 

I doubt that President Trump, an essential illiterate, has any concept of evolutionary psychology. Rather than an objective materialist (Ayn Rand), he is a psychopath consumed by a deep inferiority complex driving him to obsessively demonstrate his power over everyone else, maniacally disregarding the rights of others (Bill Faw, DNR, 3.11.25). Faw, a psychology professor, makes the distinction between a successful and unsuccessful psychopath: Putin is the former; Trump is the latter, incapable of moderating his behavior or checking his primary impulses, often getting into trouble (e.g., signing and non-signing the proclamation of the Alien Enemies Act). 

Faw’s distinction might account for the attraction Trump feels for Putin. Putin is clearly who Trump wants to be. Freud might characterize this worship as transference neurosis, an attempt to resolve through another what one cannot resolve in one’s self. The same phenomenon might also account for the attraction of hard-core MAGA enthusiasts blind to the obvious psychosis of Trump.

There is perhaps in addition a more insidious relationship between Putin and Trump, one the media, perhaps out of fear, has largely ignored: Trump’s economic dependence on Russia. The economic link between Trump and Russia is well documented, beginning with Trump’s visit to Moscow in 1987 during which he connected with several oligarchs ready to pounce on state-owned resources during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Having failed in his business attempts in the United States, Trump may have been ready to do a little pouncing of his own . 

By the mid-90s, he had burned through his inheritance and declared bankruptcies four times. American banks wouldn’t touch him. But he surprisingly received huge loans from Deutsche Bank, notorious for channeling large sums to recipients notably incurious about their lenders, i.e., the Russian mafia and oligarchs. Alan Lapidus, Trump’s architect, said “[Trump] could not get anybody in the United States to lend him anything. It was all coming out of Russia.” After Trump had begun to get back on his feet, Donald Jr. said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assests” (Michael Hirsh, “Foreign Policy”). Un huh.

Given the Trump administration’s project to destroy our infrastructure, our affiliations with long-time allies, and deliver Ukraine to Russia on a platter, it seems as if Putin has Trump in his pocket. Putin wants to demonstrate to his people and other countries the weakness of democracies, for which he, like other kleptocrats, has nothing but contempt. Democracy just gets in the kleptocrat’s way. 

We daily experience from the Trump administration new assaults on democracy, which began with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. His administration is thumbing its nose at judicial rulings, arresting and deporting people without due process, attacking the press, threatening law firms, alienating the United States from its traditional allies, undermining NATO, accusing Ukraine of starting the war with Russia, dismantling the Department of Education, USAID, and Radio Free Europe, withdrawing funds from research and universities, and threatening to freeze social security payments if he doesn’t get his way. This is just for starters. 

A generous interpretation of Trump/Musk’s actions are that as members of the billionaire class, they see no purpose in government that takes wealth from them to redistribute to the ninety-nine percent. Members of the billionaire class, after all, do not need social security, health insurance, or public schools. 

A less generous interpretation is that Trump and Musk are Putin’s parasitoids, larvae planted inside the host to destroy it from within, not unlike the worm that seems to have eaten out RFK Jr.’s brain.

#TraitorTrump, #DumpTrump

See Trump/Russia