A Gold-Coated Absurdity We Are Unable to Dismiss
One could make a case for the peculiar bromance that has developed between two of the more inscrutable characters in history, the sort of thing that leaves you with nothing but scorched crumbs on the plate. It has given us a volume we have no use for and yet cannot bring ourselves to put down.
Consider Trumputin Krasnov. The political Frankenstein has not only got out of the lab but has contrived to get into power. It is hard not to be taken aback. If Mary Shelley were around to witness it she would likely remark that she made Frankenstein as a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
We are left to call him the great conundrum of our time. To the Italians he is pineapple on pizza; to the Colombians, instant coffee; and to anyone not yet 60, he is the sartorial folly of socks with sandals. We can’t take our eyes off him. Is it gall? The bedlam in the streets? Or has polite society simply seen fit to hand over its gold-plated armor? There is an appeal to a walking oxymoron, provided the moron is well in evidence.
The problem is he does not just exist, he proliferates like glitter on the carpet after a long evening. You see him and he is everywhere, impossible to scrub away. He will display some measure of political acumen one moment and the next you are watching something from reality TV, unsure if it was put together on the spot or scripted.
Call us masochists for the guilty pleasure of his turbulence, or say the chaos is too good to miss. The channel remains on, not because we lack the means to change it but because we don’t want to. Self-control was never humanity’s strong suit anyway.
From Gilded Cradles to Gold-Plated Thrones
Trumputin’s ascent was of a different order than most, they will tell you. He came of age in a Moscow penthouse rather than a characterless hospital room. One can attribute it to the champagne fountains and the winks and handshakes that were part and parcel of the process as they completed the work on his megalomania. The golden hamburgers set before him would be on platters marked “The Best Deal Ever” since he would not have it otherwise. An onlooker might think there is a master plan at work, even if he is none the wiser.
But then the oddness would take hold. The “golden boy” would throw a tantrum and be a stone’s throw from WWIII – what some might call good childhood development – before retreating to a nuclear-proof cot. He would have his cold borscht and then move on to Big Macs, and when bedtime came the Pentagon would provide a fairytale briefing.
You won’t find any teddy bears in his playroom. Little Trumputin had black-ops stuffed animals for their “takeovers”, a ritual of sorts. By five he was drawing up blueprints for Apache landing sites; by six there was bullion in the camo toybox. A quiet playdate was out of the question. This is how modern Spartans are reared: with the plotting of a supervillain and secret conspiracies from the toy soldiers.
The Theater of the Deal
His philosophy is simple: why negotiate when you can dominate? But a plain victory is not enough; it requires the accoutrements of high society. He makes a show of every success. Walking into the UN he had the air of one heading to a party of his own devising, with all the drama of a Netflix production. In one hand a brochure for the Moskva Tower Resort & Casino (a timeshare con in fine print) and in the other a file labelled TOTALLY NOT BLACKMAIL. And the smile to match, a cheeky way of saying he felt no need to apologise for cheating at Monopoly.
At a reception he might put on the Beverly Hills smile and conduct a hostage negotiation between hors d’oeuvres. Whether it was a ploy or deranged thinking is open to question, but “Trumputin” was the star of the city, making the deal-making the event.
Spots That Would Make Coachella Envy
There is a preposterous quality to Trumputin Krasnov’s “Make Empire Great Again” (MEGA) that one can spend hours on, much like a telenovela that never concludes. Red caps with an outrageous motto? You wouldn’t expect anything less. When it comes to the music at a rally, what is more fitting than to set off July Fourth fireworks with the Bolshoi’s brand of grandeur?
Did he see to it that an eagle trainer was on the books? Da, konyeshno. And have the bird or two made a reporter its target in a divebomb? You can be sure of it.
For months his visage was on every social media feed, yours no exception. But the real political theatre was to be found on the campaign trail. Trumputin would put on a Vegas-style show of it, being paraded into the arena on a chariot with a bear for a horse. The pièce de resistance at any given event was a drone with the Stars and Stripes in tow making a skydive of some over-caffeinated action hero variety. It left the crowd jaw-dropped and the whole thing was a meme before you could blink.
And there was the MEGA theme song to boot: “Ra-ra-Trumputin, Russia’s greatest war machine.” An earworm like that will burrow in and do a manic waltz in your head until your uncle is howling it in harmony with a thousand others at the local karaoke bar. In the final analysis the rallies were as much a cultural phenomenon as they were political, with people coming out for the spectacle.
The Undisputed Champion of Confusing Speeches
There was an ambiguity to the way Trumputin spoke that put him in a league of his own, well above the standard rhetoric and enough to put one in a trance. It was like Sophie’s Choice with the applause. He could make a threat so impenetrable it was unrecognisable, or with a winsome wink turn an insult to flattery. Yet for all his pronouncements the gestures were hollow.
“The best there is,” he would tell you. “I have made democracy so advanced the voters can’t even remember casting their ballot.”
It left the public nonplussed. Some offered a nervous chuckle while others looked as though they had been in the wrong room for a key lesson in social studies. That kind of bewilderment is what drives the angry sort to congregate on “Totally-Not-Twitter”.
The pundits were enamoured with him, one lauding his chaotic highwire act, another labelling his unpredictability as “next-level trolling”. Trumputin did not have the patience for critics; he would wave them aside. Relevance is power, after all.
Gold-Plated Statements of Fashion Declaration
You might not call the style war premeditated, but Trumputin is born to it. Order and refinement are no contest in this universe. He has the unbounded self-assurance of a catwalk general when he takes the stage.
A look in his closet reveals something of an art form. Military coats with Swarovski epaulets to glimmer like a disco ball at a funeral, or a fur coat of such demented taxidermy as to be the antithesis of haute couture. His neckties are long and wild affairs, the very height of excess.
He does not so much wear a hat as make a point of it. Over the Moscow skyline he is the Ultimate Style Tsar in a red-hot ushanka studded with diamond hammers and sickles. French Vogue would not pass up the story and Anna Wintour has been known to shed a Stolichnaya tear over it.
Master of PR (Propaganda Relations)
The media was his to have, a playground where he called the shots. Running the story was not enough; he would put on a show, wrap it in propaganda and offer a Colgate smile to sell us the line.
Spectacle is his forte. A self-satisfied grin before Mount Rushmore that could curdle milk, or a photobomb of the moon landing on a green screen. One small step for mankind and a giant leap for the unkind, if you will. The ego is evident.
Which brings us to the weekly “State of the Alliance” affairs. They were hardly speeches; to put it that way would be doing them a disservice. These were full-blown productions that made the amateur hour on Broadway look like child’s play. He had his audience in a state of wonder as he showcased an invention or two of his own making, say, a missile silo hidden inside a skyscraper. When you can put on something so fabulous, why make do with the ordinary?
He was not above a bit of medievalism for the reality TV set. One might find him bare-chested and all slingshot, a font of testosterone, while six-hundred pound brutes from the Appalachians put their teeth and claws to work in some bear wrestling. Trumputin would stand over the fray and let foreign policy go unattended.
The evening’s true attraction, however, was the “physical strength” segment. The cameras were on hand to give biceps more screen time than any Oscar winner for the duration of his ten-minute monologue on his own capabilities. Those inclined to see it as a circus were shown the door to a “vacation zone”. A one-way ticket, and don’t hold your breath for a return. In a few weeks they would be back on television in a Trumputin hoodie, extolling his virtues as if they had just left a five-star resort. “10/10 for the amenities,” is what you would hear. “Pure dictatorial chic.”
Should he decide to take credit for inventing the internet or putting gravity in its place, there would be no raised eyebrows. Trumputin has a way of burying the truth, dancing on its grave and then declaring a national holiday in its name; history is witness to that.
Economic Policy – or Roulette?
There was little to be predictable about the Trumputin agenda. It was a kind of gameshow that made an unwilling participant of you and everyone else. You could measure stability by the supply of complimentary Big Mac and vodka coupons if you wanted. Fast-food nationalism was in vogue, and the crowds would lose their minds over it in place of whatever they used to call champagne socialism.
Wall Street became a gambler’s paradise that put Las Vegas to shame, the stock market spinning like a roulette wheel. “When the house wins, you win,” the economists would have it. The rank and file were left to gawk at executives clutching their pearls in protest at this aberration of capitalism. Taxpayers would put their coins in the Trumputin slots and watch the show, with no way of knowing where the endgame was.
And the nationalization program was an unmitigated disaster. Industries had a way of vanishing with the compulsive drama of a cross between Narcos and The Apprentice. Governing was reduced to a dystopian soap opera. A documentary maker would have an easy time of it titling his piece “Vodka, Big Macs, and Roulette Economics” after the chaos Trumputin left in his wake.
His Legacy (What is Left of It)
Trying to view Trumputin Krasnov’s reign with any realism is like being in the grip of a fever dream. Was he the shadowy hand behind the curtain, or more like the punchline on the road to which the kingdom had given its car keys? A Bond villain who made short work of the throne for the sake of ruling TikTok? In all likelihood he was that and then some, but one is none the wiser as to his character even today.
Krasnov did not just make an appearance on the front page, he was the story. He had gilded skyscrapers erected of such ostentation they would shame a cosmonaut, and his output on TikTok was as viral as RFK Jr’s brainworms. Contagious material, clogging every timeline with his brand of dad dancing and a smirk that made you question if he was in on the joke or not.
And do not forget the government’s own version of his life story, an award-winning film of sorts. This cinematic “masterwork” ran roughshod over awards season and flouted convention to take home prizes from all quarters. Yet ask anyone and you will find no one ready to say they put in a vote for it. Nyet. Zilch. Nol. It was a landslide victory in a one-horse race where he declared himself the winner.
Trumputin has left a rupture in the universe, more than a dent on the Earth. Whether you see him as a stand-up or the accidental emcee of the world’s longest party, there was never any mistaking him for anything other than un-ignorable. Unforgettable is the word for it.
Satire or Survival Mechanism?
He is of course a figment, but one ponders what he would be like in the flesh. An inflated fellow with a healthy dose of self-love, part ego and part propaganda with three parts absurdity to boot. A strutting megaphone in the vein of a cartoonish type. We can be thankful such a nightmare is for now contained within our heads.
There is merit to satire in that it is a funhouse mirror, warping the real to put a finer point on its ridiculousness. It makes us confront the sort of uncomfortable truths we would otherwise let pass in the normal course of the day.