Putin himself is a CIA asset

That’s not exactly a new or particularly radical view. Going back to Yeltsin’s soft coup in the 90s, combined with Putin’s rapid adoption of Shock Doctrine economic policies in Saint Petersburg and then across the country through United Russia… I mean, when the son of your old arch rival’s CIA Director looks you in the eyes and says “This guy’s got a good soul”, come on. That’s gotta throw at least a couple of red flags.

So, if Putin owns Trump, and CIA owns Putin, and Trump owns CIA, then who’s controlling who in this crazy world?

The “X is a puppet of Y” line has always been the jangling keys of international policy. You don’t have to look that hard to find the hands of international finance behind both leaders. The Mercers and the Kochs and Thiel/Musk/Zuck Silicon Valley cartel on one end. The industrial billionaires who took over Russian heavy industry - Mikhelson and Mordashov and Prokhorov - on the other. But they’re the untouchables. Trump and Putin are the ones you’re supposed to take aim at.

What’s bleaker than that is the recognition that there isn’t some shadowy singular evil hand moving all the pieces on the board. Nobody is actually in control. Trump is lashing out at people purely out of a sense of petty revenge, and the conservative allies already in the federal government are willing to help him get it. Putin’s fumbling grasp at a revanchist Slavic Ethno-Superstate is the result of him drinking too much of his own koolaid. The techbros and the old oil money are all burnt out from cocaine and ketamine, chasing the ideological fantasies laid out by their parents and grandparents, most of whom are long dead.

A lot of this is purely opportunistic greed and petty backbiting. Trump hating “liberals in the media” for embarrassing him ten years ago. Putin resenting his country’s fall from grace and lashing out at every neighbor in shelling range. Both seeing a kindred spirit in the other, as they’re set on megalomaniac revenge sprees.