To Russia With Love: An Open Letter to Vladimir Putin

Dear Mr. Putin,

It was with some considerable alarm today–although I must admit now that it seems foolish to me even as I write it–that I greeted my day with the distinct displeasure of turning on the American cable news networks. How could I expect anything but an admixture of nausea and frustration? Unfortunately, it is part of my current job to monitor markets and the news that might affect them. This used to be, historically that is, not some esoteric and enigmatic exercise, but since the Federal Reserve system here has decided to inject even more drugs, more toxins into this consumption-addict economy for the elites alone, well, one is left to shrug, palms lifted skyward, to just guess as to when this all comes crashing down. About the American financial system: There was a time, long, long ago (some will say prior to Greenspan’s put or Nixon’s gold punt–I say before December 1913) that there was a means by which to rationally judge the state of things, that is, the state of the economy. Funny–albeit tragically so–that was about the same moment in which the government, as the countrymen in our best region say, “lost its damn fool mind” regarding foreign affairs. It has been a disaster ever since, as you, a former intelligence officer and versed historian well know. That burp-of-hell-on-earth “bank” is the Tower of Babel that just keeps on giving, to McDonnell Douglas, to Raytheon, to Boeing, to Pfizer… I would continue, but I think you get the point.

Ah, yes, the point: The drum beat for war here with your nation, your people is rising to a crescendo once again. Not from the American people mind you. The vast majority could not identify the Ukraine on a map, much less Crimea or for that matter the Donbas. Meanwhile, those talking heads on TV can have their production teams flash a colored map on the screen, and then they can act knowledgeable. They all then use the same words, and when it comes to war, they all drop the charade and façade of ideological division. Russian troops are “massing” on the border with Ukraine. And of course, “democracy is threatened” in a would be NATO ally. Very serious indeed.

About what had them all a tither? You, see Mr. Putin, America is a very weird place. I suspect you’ve picked up on our secret by now. Some of the best people in the world live here, but even an unhealthy chunk of those good souls have been imbibing the hemlock of the patriotism equals submission to the state narrative for so long that the little flame of freedom that might have once resided in their hearts is now pretty much snuffed out. I see the little plumes of wispy smoke all over during this Co-Vid hysteria. Land of the free? Home of the brave? Come on?! The federal bureaucrats ordered Americans in their houses for two weeks and now that whole flattening the curve insanity has extended to weeks ad infinitum. At the height of it all, some were deemed essential serfs, others non-essential serfs, and then others those who would be just fine working from home on their laptops. Eventually, we have gotten to the point at present wherein it is rather clear that the brown shirt squad, has, as their senile Führer mumbled a couple of months ago, lost patience with us, the remnant, recalcitrant kulaks. The mayor of America’s biggest city is a sociopath who just declared an apartheid state for five year olds. America is being torn apart, so in classic American establishment fashion since World War I, American boyers and serfs, white and black, vaxxed and unvaxxed must unite again to ward off the supposed threat of your armed forces intimidating a neighboring nation on the other side of the globe. As the gentlemanly but also consistently wrong Larry Kudlow muttered on Fox Business: “Politics must stop at the border.” Ted Cruz stuttered that because Biden allowed you to trade gas through a pipeline to Germany, this act has made you more brazen.

Yes, Mr. Putin, this is the humiliating level of what passes for political discourse in the United States these days, lapped up by the laptop class in America.

What the laptoppers really are either too dumb or too lazy to understand is that your demands regarding the Ukraine are nothing but mild and reasonable. The truth of the matter is that NATO’s continuance and the NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization’s planned expansion up to Russia’s borders, constitute the acts of an American empire in decline, writhing about in the senile temper tantrum of a one time hegemon. The cable news shows and their pliant audiences do not consider for a moment placing themselves in your position, and they recoil at the prospect of pondering the reverse. What if an unhinged Russia were to form a renewed Warsaw Pact (let’s go ahead and call it the Tehran Alliance, given current conditions) and that alliance moved to add Canada or Mexico or even Guatemala to it? Maybe it was a noble mission that brought about the alliance? Perhaps you and the Russian people saw too many people held hostage in their own homes? Russian gas could heat those prison homes, or pressure might be applied to end superstitious lockdowns as well as mask and vaccine mandates? We all know what would happen: The American war machine would be knocking down our own Uncle Joe’s door (Biden instead of Stalin), to launch a pre-emptive strike or engage in a blockade. In other words, I wish to thank you for your remarkable restraint in this Ukraine matter. After all, with successive and failed American regimes bleating “democracy” and “self-determination” over and over again, ignored in all of this is the fact that Russian intervention in the region intensified only after the U.S. State Department backed a coup against, yes, a democratically-elected Ukrainian administration. The people of the Donbas and Crimea exercise self-determination when they vote for closer ties and even annexation to Russia. That’s one major ingredient to our volatile cocktail of American idiosyncrasies: The ruling class here calls getting their way “democracy”.

Mr. Putin, please do know that there are Americans who do not blindly worship the state and its military. There are heroes here just as idealistic if not as completely courageous as our countryman, Mr. Edward Snowden, to whom you have graciously granted refuge. They bear names like Ron Paul, Scott Horton, Glenn Greenwald, and Daniel McAdams. They uncover the crimes of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the rest of the Deep State here. They rail against the warfare-welfare state. And, in the world outside of the laptop class, in the world beyond Fox News and CNN and MSNBC, they have been bold enough to highlight the facts. These include the fact that the CIA orchestrated a coup in the Ukraine at the behest of Samantha Power, who at various points during the Obama years held immensely powerful positions with impressive titles, including the most risible: Chair of the Atrocities Prevention Board. I’m not making this up. Did Ms. Power believe that this was all a fun jape, a wild ruse? Did she read the title incorrectly and conclude that she was commissioned to be the Chair of the Atrocities Perpetration Board? In any case, back in 2014, Power and the CIA backed murderous, neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalists to topple your ally, then President Viktor Yanukovych.

Pardon the odd inclusion of a block quote here within a letter, but this is what Salon magazine reporter Patrick Smith wrote back in 2014:

Ukraine comes full circle. In six months, a troubled but intact nation is now pulled to pieces. Vasyl Krutov, the general in charge of what the provisional government in Kiev insists on calling its ‘anti-terror’ military campaign in the east and south, acknowledged over the weekend that the country is ‘essentially at war.’

Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, had to go in February because of the violence that had erupted in Independence Square, scene of demonstrations since the previous November. We still do not know who was responsible for the shootings used to justify the Yankuovych coup, but we know this: The provos who took his place are now doing the shooting — killing their countrymen, reclassified as terrorists, by the score.

Samantha Power, the most tendentious hypocrite in the Obama administration (and the competition is keen), defends these murderers thusly: ‘Their response is reasonable, it is proportional, and frankly it is what any one of our countries would have done in the face of this threat,’ Power said in the Security Council at the weekend.”

Of course, it was the State Department and CIA all along who had fomented those protests and shootings. The resultant chaos moved you to further ally with those in Eastern Ukraine and in the Crimea itself. You were right to do so. What must shock the American consciousness is the fact that while you, Mr. Putin, are the pariah par excellence, the font of all things sinister and nefarious to the American media and political class, in truth, you are the one shedding light on the monsters of the world, like Samantha Powers, who as a loyal soldier of the Democratic Party, just keeps earning promotions and new fangled positions. After she advised invading Libya for no particular reason, and after that 2011 war against Libya resulted in utter chaos and the reemergence of chattel slavery, not to mention numerous Christian martyrdoms, she got promoted to U.N. Ambassador! Now, even after backing skinheads in the Ukraine and defending their wanton murder spree, she’s now the “Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development”–whatever the hell that is. Power is the Anthony Fauci of the State Department.

And somehow, you are the dictator?! Take solace that you are far more popular in Russia than Joe Biden and Congress are here.

As a parting note, I offer an appeal to your good senses and a necessary, general qualification to the compliments I proffered above.

The appeal, of course, is that you should feel free to defend Russia’s interests and the prosperous and peaceful future of the Russian people–just tread very lightly in dealing with Old Europe and Old America. The more the command and control demographic Co-vid experiment falls apart here, and the more the onerous weight of crushing sovereign debt destabilizes the West, means that the powers that be will become increasingly desperate to scapegoat and wag the dog. Find peace above all else.

The qualification to the aforementioned lauds: I am an anarcho-capitalist so I would love to see the end of all of the despotic governments (pardon the tautology) plaguing the earth. States are blights on human existence. You are the head of a state. I wish no personal ill upon you, just a liberation for the Russian people, from the government whose very existence is that of a parasite on the back of very Russian citizen. If you’re picking up some Russian thought with a hint of vodka, that’s because alongside Rothbard, I’ve read your now-deceased but never dead countrymen, Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman. Inspiring.

Between now and Russian Ancapistan, keep up the good work of pissing off the Western establishment. See if you can get Pope Francis to denounce you, and after that, I’ll start a Kickstarter to raise funds for a Putin statue right here in Chicago.

Ну тогда до свидания,

Igor Richied

P.S. Should you wish to whisk me away on a grand Russian history/current events/goodwill speaking tour–funded by an oligarch at Gazprom, of course, no public funds–I am available from now until death. You know where to find me. You worked in the KGB after all!