Evil or Not # 4: Vladimir Putin

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

My vote goes for evil. Easily one of the worst leaders of two continents at once.

[dead0man]

He is a horrible person and a menace to peace, but he's not evil.

[RINO Tom]

He is a horrible person and a menace to peace, but he's not evil.

I'd agree with this.

[The Last Northerner]

Pretty competent given Russia was a horrible mess after Yelstin. A dictator - yes, evil - not really.

[Blue3]

He is a horrible person and a menace to peace, but he's not evil.

I'd agree with this.

[SATW]

Pretty competent given Russia was a horrible mess after Yelstin. A dictator - yes, evil - not really.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah, I don't see being better than a drunk loser as a mark of great success. Putin's machismo shenanigans have been showy and did a bit of a good for a while; but are now spectacularly backfiring on Russia. Fortunately for him most right-wingers (in and out of mother russia) have so much pent-up homoerotic lust for him they kind of ignore his mediocore record to fantasisr about becoming his uke.

[DavidB.]

NOTA.

[RogueBeaver]

He is a horrible person and a menace to peace, but he's not evil.

[The Last Northerner]

Yeah, I don't see being better than a drunk loser as a mark of great success. Putin's machismo shenanigans have been showy and did a bit of a good for a while; but are now spectacularly backfiring on Russia. Fortunately for him most right-wingers (in and out of mother russia) have so much pent-up homoerotic lust for him they kind of ignore his mediocore record to fantasisr about becoming his uke.

Some people based their evaluation off alternatives. Obama is somewhat highly rated on this forum (yourself included) partially due his comparison to Bush (and sometimes Lady Clinton/McCain/Romney) and generally leaving his the USA (domestically at least) than when Bush left office. In the case of Putin, the best comparison is Yelstin. Why wouldn't you hold Obama and Putin to the same metric?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

True maybe I am being a bit hypocritical. It's clear he presided over a large period of economic growth - although this is partially a dead cat bounce/creation of high oil prices etc. rather than genius on his part. Perhaps he should be commended on that part, but its increasingly clear his style lacks nuance especially in geopolitics. Crimea and Donetsk was an immense failure and Russia looks like an increasingly pathetic nation, tbh.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

This is one of the trickiest ones, because he's undoubtedly a fairly ruthless pseudo-dictator who is a big fan of destabilizing every region he's in. In the end, though, he's very strategic and everything he does has a purpose to strengthen Russia and the empire he wants to collect. He's not excessively cruel like so many of his predecessors were, more cold and calculating.

By the standard of Russian leaders and the average dictator in the world today, I would say not evil by a slim margin.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

He is a horrible person and a menace to peace, but he's not evil.

[tpfkaw]

Everyone has some sort of internal moral compass by which they justify their own actions, even psychopaths, rapists, murders – study after study shows they think their actions are justified, that they think of themselves as good people and even that they rate themselves as better-than-average people. Adolf Eichmann, Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden; all thought of themselves as good, moral people. And each had plenty of followers who agreed! (Bundy was inundated with marriage proposals in prison).

So that's not a good metric to judge evilness because by that standard nobody is. Are Putin's actions evil? I would say yes, even (especially?) if one were to take the perspective of an anti-liberal Russian nationalist; he and his cronies have robbed the country blind and have managed to lose Ukraine forever.

[SATW]

Comparing Putin to Pol Pot, bin laden or Eichmann is beyond ridiculous.