Conflicting views were given by, among others, President Biden, who said Putin was a "rational actor who miscalculated significantly" on Ukraine, and Mikhail Podoyak, adviser to Ukraine´s Presidential Office, who disagreed: Putin "is not rational, he is emotional."
Who is right? Answer: both.
How can that be?
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"There is the condition which the modern French psychologists have called the 'idée fixe', which may be trifling in character, and accompanied by complete sanity in every other way. A man might form such an idée fixe... and under its influence be capable of any fantastic outrage."
-- Arthur Conan Doyle, The return of Sherlock Holmes --
Idée fixe is a pioneering term in psychology which has fallen out of fashion. All I can say is: too bad for psychology.
An idée fixe is an idea dominating the mind and firmly resistant to any evidence or attempt to modify it.
Wikipedia:
"In most contexts, idée fixe refers to an obsession or a passion one fixates on. However, the term also has a pathological dimension, denoting serious psychological issues.
The pathology is what is denoted in psychology and law. Idée fixe began as a parent category of obsession, and as a preoccupation of mind the idée fixe resembles today's obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although the afflicted person can think, reason and act like other people, they are unable to stop a particular train of thought or action. However, in obsessive-compulsive disorder, the person recognizes the absurdity of their obsession or compulsion, which may not be the case with an idée fixe (normally being a delusion)."
Terrorists and mass killers are often pronounced cases of men with an idée fixe. Time after time after time, their families, friends, co-workers and neighbors describe them as "normal" - and they are normal in most respects.
Accountant, real estate investor, Stephen Paddock is a case in point. In 2017, he committed the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, killing 60 people with a rifle from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas. His extensive, meticulous preparation involved research and observation which can only be described as rational.
Paddock is a textbook example of the final conclusion made time and again about mass killers: "His motive remains unknown." I submit that an idée fixe is its own rasion d´être or reason for being. It IS its motive. Of course, that explanation escapes those who dismiss the concept of idée fixe as passé, out of style.
I am sure that Putin is rational in 99% of his daily activities. He gets up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, meets with advisers and bureaucrats, gets a haircut, watches television, receives heads of state, reads reports, talks on the telephone, drinks coffee, gives speeches, ad infinitum.
His idée fixe is in the other 1%. It orders his life, gives it meaning. That order and meaning are why so many men with an idée fixe who complete their "fantastic outrage" kill themselves. In their minds they have done what they were put here to do. Over and out.
Subjects are limitless. Anything can become an idée fixe - from suicide and mass shootings to 30 years of savings to see the Titanic.
As for Putin´s idée fixe...
Biden mentioned it in the Trapper interview. Unfortunately, Biden did not see it for what it is.
Mother Russia.
Putin is a man on a mission. He thinks his country has a Russian-Christian-fascist, patriarchal, romantic-monarchical historical destiny to fulfill. He famously labelled the war in Ukraine at the outset a “special military operation”, and for him it is exactly that: special. A common war? Oh no - perish the thought.
For more on Putin´s idée fixe - what he is really, truly, deeply, thinking and feeling - well, off we go, into the wild blue yonder.
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Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) is Putin´s intellectual stepfather. He quotes Ilyin at the drop of a hat and likes to send copies of his book Our Tasks to associates, to hangers-on, to Kremlin wall-leaners.
Royalist, anti-communist and far-rightest, Ilyin was expelled from his country after the Bolshevik Revolution. Unhinged blowhard, unable to hold his ink, he penned over 40 books and hundreds of articles. No dog could take a crap without Ilyin commenting on the underlying significance of the event.
Putin´s goofball idea that Ukraine and Russia are in truth one nation - Ukrainophobia or anti-Ukrainianism - indivisible but artificially divided as part of an anti-Russia plot - comes directly from Ilyin who did not invent it but pushed it.
A few Ilyin quotes (1930s and 1940s):
He yearned for a state dominated by a patriotic church-army complex. It will be led by a Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar rolled into one:
“And whoever does not unconditionally love his national vozhd [leader, guide, dictator] and does not believe him, believe in him is not sending him his beams of loyalty, force and inspiration that comes from the heart and of the will…will lose him; this is exactly why the enemies try to weaken and compromise with doubts, mockery, demonization and slander the image of the vozhd, the Sovereign.”
The vozhd´s milito-spiritual, blood and soil mission:
“This idea should be state-historical, state-national, state-patriotic, state-religious. This idea should stem from the very fabric of Russian soul and Russian history, from its spiritual hunger. This idea should speak of the essence of Russians – both of the past and of the future – it should light the way for the generations of Russians to come, giving meaning to their lives and giving them vigor…What could that be? It is the idea of upbringing of the national spiritual quality in Russian people. This is above all. This is artistic. This is for the ages. There will be no Russia without it.”
Ilyin´s ultimate solution to Russia´s - "Our Cross is heavy" - burden: a fascist state without the name and without the "mistakes":
“What did Hitler do? He has stopped the process of bolshevization giving a huge favor to all the Europe…While Mussolini leads Italy and Hitler leads Germany – European culture is given a reprieve... Germans were able to break the democratic deadlock…What is happening here is the great social intercalation; but not of the property, but of state-political and cultural-guidance nature…The stratum of those who guide is being renewed consequently and radically…In accordance with new mentality…Those who do not like the “New Spirit” are being pulled out…This spirit is the substance of this whole movement; it burns in the hearts of every true national-socialist, it flexes his muscles, rings in his words and shines in his eyes…The unjust blackening and slander impedes adequate comprehension of it, sins against the truth and hurts the entire humankind...Fascism is a complex, multifaceted and historically speaking by far not a used up phenomena. It has the healthy and the sick, old and new, state-conservative and destructive features. That is why in assessing it we need to be calm and just.” ...Franco and Salazar understood this and are trying to avoid these mistakes. They don’t call their regimes “fascist”. Let’s hope that Russian patriots will reflect upon the mistakes of fascism and national-socialism in full and will not repeat them.”
Like Hitler and so many others before and after him, Ilyin fanaticized a Third Way:
“We are neither pupils nor teachers for the West. We are disciples of God and teachers for ourselves.”
Did Ilyin not have both oars in the water?
"You want justice, and we should all seek it. But it requires from us artistic individualization in the perception of people; and only love can do that. Angry pest control is sometimes necessary, and failure to do so can make one a sentimental traitor. But this anger must be born of love, it must be its own embodiment in order to find justification and measure in it..."
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You wanted to know what Putin is thinking and feeling in his heart of hearts.
Mystery solved.
Crackpot, dingbat. Claptrap. Weirdo, wacko. Oddball. Screwball. Nut case.
Nullité sonore.
The war in Ukraine is the sort of fantastic outrage which occurs when you let a friendly neighborhood hysteric do your thinking for you.