SUB/DOM WORLD DOM
Putin, Xi Blowing Kisses — Part 2
A look back at our dark time’s worst couple of the year, 2022
Or — picking up, where we left off — is Xi more realistically the top in the newly evolving life partner or death with benefits phase of their long Sino-Russo Dom/sub sub/Dom relationship?
With China’s economy now 10x Russia’s and growing rapidly — when the two were roughly the same size or ‘on equal footing’ as recently as the ’90s — is Xi really the one pulling all the strings now? Green lighting moves and planting seeds while teasing about silver patterns?
Pitching not catching plans for world domination?
Did big Bear Xi give his Twinkie-poo Putin a full-on verbal head fake, in their very own Dictators on a Train moment?
Running up global credit cards while antiquing together in Beijing?
Oh, you should toooh-tally invade Ukraine!
By rights, if you ask me.
I mean — if it were me and I were in your shoes.
All of Europe would be speaking Russian.
They probably already would be, if it weren’t for that nasty thorn in our side NATO? Am I right?
Ugh, I sooooooooooooo want to drop a bomb on them, don’t you? Wouldn’t that be fun?
Ooo, look! An armoire!
Anyway, what were we saying?
Oh right. You’re taking over Ukraine.
Have at it, Boo!
We got people to kill too.
I totally get it.
And we’ll help you with it.
We will.
All we can. I mean, why wouldn’t we?
Oh, wait!
Stop everything!
I just thought of something.
And you’re so gonna kill me, when I say it, ’cause you know I’m right.
Ready?!
Ukrainian blue matches your eyes!
[faux-muffled squeals, cheerleader shimmy fists]
That’s it!
You’re getting it!
End of discussion!
Or I’ll buy it for you — we haves to has it!
Is the China Gambit and the Ukraine Maneuver part of a 30-year-long geopolitical sucker punch?
And if so who’s throwing it? Funding it? Benefiting from it?
And, what comes next?
Does Putin himself even know? Or care entirely?
Or is he just making it up, taking off his shirt, manfully, bungling and screwing it up as he goes?
Is Putin even rational at this point, if he ever was?
Or is he hearing voices that aren’t entirely grounded in reality?
From the voices in his head telling him that he’s Peter the Great reborn, although thirteen full inches shorter and in other lengthy ways likely vexing to the petite respawn — not so Great.
To the fawning yes-men and oligarchical toadies of his inner circle.
All of whom are saying Yes and spinning Stalin-grade crazy yarns of Russian readiness and riches and Russia über alles for the mini-master’s ear — under penalty of death — upon which Putin is making promises and taking bloody action?
A lot to consider.
Exploring questions like these and more from all angles, and yes, even with politically incorrect corrective humor, is vital.
To stop Putin and end the bloodshed and weakening of our allies and supply chains in Europe, not to mention the chaos in the global economy, and toxic multi-region instability, we need to get in his calm little cranium and figure out what the hell he’s scheming.
- So we can better keep the attention on him, laughing at him, mocking him, sending him more OshKosh, giving him more lifts, because he’s freakishly small. For a human.
- So we can get out ahead of him and cut him off before he drags all of us across the Rubicon into war, if we haven’t already passed that little waterway a few miles back. Thought I saw a sign.
As Biden probably put it to Xi:
We should keep our friends close, our enemies closer, and all the world’s incompetent whack jobs on a leash.
Or as he could’ve spelled it out, a bit more tactfully, when they spoke in private in Poland:
We all need to proceed carefully with — and take a seriously self-interested longsighted step-back to rethink — the grown-up nested cabbage patch doll running Russia.
Bottom line
China is Putin’s key back into the executive washroom of world affairs, making everything possible — all his hopes and dreams. For Putin and his oligarch-infested state, it could be as sick and as simple as that. Putin can’t do much well and Russia won’t hold onto superpower status much longer, beyond its vintage nuclear arsenal’s bonafide claim to it, without help and sign-off from the far better-run China.
Tripping up team-Xi in the process may just be the tsvety on the skazka.
As for Xi, The Economist summed prevailing ‘let them eat Russia’ thinking in Beijing, “The Alternative World Order: The war in Ukraine will determine how China sees the world — and how threatening it becomes” — still highly recommended.
Across both halves of the hit it and quit it already “it” couple of 2022 — that can’t quit killing people or quit each other. Our Dark Time’s Absolut and Stolichnaya Sponsored Worst Couple of the Year.
Do we call ’em, Xi-utin or Pu-Xi? Or I dunno.
Let’s call the whole thing off and each of them equally off their rocker and unfit for office or orifice. Coming all too soon to a military theater and a neighboring country near you.
We have two worked-up, power-hungry, and morally-flexible world leaders with nukes and huge armies using their obsession with the West and their lubed up pillow-talk chats with each other as justifications and tools to murder people and take what they want, if and when they choose to.
Where will they stop?
Who and what will stop them?
Story still developing: devolving.
Happy New Year, and God bless us, Everyone.
Excerpts above adapted from, expanded on, and transmogrified by pics and new links with healthy amounts of snark added to a Q1 ’22 piece, published on Dialogue & Discourse: Inside Putin’s Head? President Xi, Rasputin’s Ghost, and a Bag of Cats
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