There must be a chapter in future history books about how the mainstream media has hypnotized the Western public in regard to President Vladimir Putin. He must surely be the most vilified man since Adolph Hitler. Everywhere among well-educated and informed people I find no room at all for the argument that he is a rational and, for a politician, basically honest man. Even his obvious intelligence — just read his articulate talk about the Ukrainian constitution and Zelensky’s shallow claim to an extended presidency — makes little impression on anyone east of Belorussia; on the rare occasion that anyone admits the he has brains, despair quickly follows, for this intellect, one is told, is only put to evil uses.

He invaded Ukraine. Try making the argument that he signed two agreements with Ukraine trying to avoid a war, and your listener quickly scowls. Report that, just two months into the conflict he nearly signed a peace deal with Ukraine, and a sort of amused doubt shadows the face of the listener. Such is the advantage of controlling the MSM message: any information from other sources is immediately suspect.

He gobbles up territory. He didn’t hesitate to swallow Crimea, did he? Well, he did hesitate long enough for the locals to vote massively to join Russia, but more pertinently, he wanted to keep Russia’s only warm-water naval base there, a point Americans and Brits can certainly understand: just ask the folks who were expelled from Diego Garcia. And in the just-mentioned nearly-signed peace deal, Donetsk and Lugansk would have remained in Ukraine. Clearly, Putin is not interested in gaining territory.

But by now your interlocutor has turned blue listening to so much history. At best, he or she will be skeptical: CNN never mentioned that.

He is a liar. Didn’t he lie about not invading Ukraine, and then invade a few days later? Well, that’s true, but to say that your troops are going to make a surprise invasion next Thursday spoils the fun. The fact that it is the West that has lied to Putin never enters the conversation. As he correctly tells it:

“They first provoked us in the Donbas, led us by the nose for eight years, deceived us that they were supposedly going to resolve the issue peacefully, and forced us to make attempts to bring the situation to peace by armed means. Then they deceived us during the negotiation process, decided that they would defeat Russia on the battlefield, inflict a strategic defeat on it. Then we warned them: do not enter our territory, do not fire at Belgorod and other adjacent territories, otherwise we will have to create a security zone.

“Watch all the reports of your Western colleagues. After all, no one is talking about the shelling of Belgorod and other adjacent territories, everyone is talking only about the fact that Russia has opened a new front, attacking Kharkiv. Not a word. What causes this? They did it with their own hands. Well, then they reap the fruits of their creativity. The same thing can happen in the case of the use of high-precision long-range weapons that you asked about.”

It seems that the West in general has reaped the fruits of the media’s creativity. It is really an accomplishment to make people think that they are getting all the relevant information about an issue when they are really just getting one side of it. On network television, when two or three experts are brought in to discuss a foreign-policy issue, the differences of opinion are mere nuances — but viewers get the impression that the relevant sides of the debate have been represented. Let’s hear it for democracy.

This deception is similar to that of futuristic sci-fi movies, which always add just enough recognizable elements for their audience to latch onto the story. So the shooter blasting his foe with a 25^th-century laser (or whatever) pulls an 18^th-century trigger with his forefinger. A Star Trek captain plops down in a thick-cushioned executive armchair on the bridge (I thought there’s no gravity out in space — or has that changed?), and his evil opponent sits on an ornate throne just as French kings did centuries ago.

And so it is with Putin. He has never mastered the art of the sound bite, and in translation, sounds like a dour librarian. He says, “They should keep in mind that theirs are small and densely populated countries, which is a factor to reckon with before they start talking about striking deep into the Russian territory.” The media simply writes this up as another nuclear threat, wringing their journalistic hands over the part about “small and densely populated countries” — which makes a great headline. More to the point: it reinforces the narrative built up around Putin. So when a heretic like me says that Putin is being provoked, that he is only reacting to Western attacks — and with great restraint — the reaction is annoyed denial. People hate hearing their basic beliefs violated.

Neither do the elites like it; they end up believing their own rhetoric. Here is Peter Dickinson of the Atlantic Council, who argues that Putin isn’t serious about holding the Ukrainian land taken by Russian forces or about his veiled warnings regarding a sharp response to provocations: “Meanwhile, the multiple retreats from ‘historically Russian land’ conducted by Putin’s invading army since 2022 suggest that the chances of a nuclear apocalypse have been wildly exaggerated. This should help Kyiv’s Western partners overcome their self-defeating fear of escalation, and encourage them to finally provide Ukraine with the tools, along with the free hand, to finish the job of defeating Russia.”

Does the expression, “famous last words” occur to anyone else?

ORDER IT NOW

As Alistair Crooke has often observed, American elites have not updated their vision of the world. He writes, “The problem with the western solutions to any geo-political problem is that they invariably comprise more of the same.” America still sends aircraft carriers to show its strength, regardless of their new status as sitting ducks on the open water. It bombs Houthis regardless of the futility of the act. It throw more money and arms into the breach in Ukraine, when talks with Russia would be far more fruitful. And its commitment to Israel remains “ironclad,” though it is itself in danger of finding itself in the dock at the ICC alongside its friend.

Putin is clearly very serious about hitting back at NATO. But mainstream-media writers figure that people in Peoria don’t need more worries. Nor do they need to know that America and NATO are attacking Russia, and in ways that have nothing whatever to do with the war. The mainstream media never move their audience outside their comfort zone. Better that they think that, like Hamas in Gaza, Putin invades, kills and bombs because he has nothing better to do.

Ron Unz, on this page,recently floated the idea of a telegraphed bombing of NATO headquarters in Brussels: some 48 hours of advance warning given. Would that knock European and American audience out of their trance long enough to see the reality of a powerful, capable Russia that defends itself? Or would those mainstream anchorjockeys spin it as proof of the same old same-old? That is, the rising threat of Putin, the need for Europeans to spend ever more on defense, Putin’s intention to invade east Europe, etc.

Maybe. It would all depend on Putin’s ability to frame the attack as a response to NATO attacks on Russia from Ukrainian soil; the public must see it as defense, not offense. Otherwise the gesture would be a PR debacle for Russia, and probably lead to consequences they haven’t anticipated.

Whatever gesture he makes, Putin should not count on any change in perceptions of him or of Russia: western countries live under a deep hypnosis, and it is unlikely to accommodate more than the most modest alterations. Those slick MSM writers are far more agile with a phrase than Putin is.