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Vladimir Putin Moved His Super Yacht This Week
This worries me
The 270’ boat was berthed in Germany, but it was quietly moved to a Russian harbor. The fact that a world leader, who never started a business or worked a high return job like a corporate CEO, owns a yacht worth hundreds of millions, is pretty weird when you think about it.
Did he keep it in Germany in case he had to get out fast? Who knows. I can’t think of any world leader with their own super yacht, other than a few Saudis or other Middle Eastern oil sheiks. But, now that he is rattling a huge saber on the Ukraine border, I guess he realized his big toy might get seized by NATO.
If there was ever an indicator that he and other oligarchs live in another reality, this one shows us why the American right now revere him. Greed and materialism are their dream, even when it is unearned. Side note, Jeff Bezos, who at least made his money, got the City of Rotterdam to agree to disassemble an historic bridge, so Bezos’ new super yacht could be moved out of its shipyard, raising the ire of the citizens of Rotterdam.
When a person like Putin operates on a personal scale like this, everything is a toy, including his massive army. He is like a kid with 100,000s of those green plastic toy soldiers, tanks, ships, and fighter planes. He has to get his toys out and threaten the world with them.
The likelihood of why this is going on is complex. Russia’s economy is in terrible shape, their vaccines are of such poor quality that less than 30% have had even one dose, and the people are suffering. Discontent is growing. The personal economics of the average family are what keep politicians in power. We learned that from Hillary Clinton’s terrible campaign.
But if Putin’s Russia is suffering, we should worry about that display of power. This is straight from the classic ‘dictator-in-trouble’ playbook. If things are getting bad, start a war. Or threaten to, to unite your people. But free information about the outside world in Russia is extremely limited.
The Russian people may not even know the extent of this mobilization. Some reports indicate that they are not supportive of starting a war in the midst of a depression. For one thing, wars are expensive, as are dictators.
