Putin and Zelensky. Presidents are not born - they become presidents

Epigraph: "When sons of bitches come to power, everyone begins a dog's life!"
Summer. Heat. Asphalt is melting in Kiev and Kharkov. Vacation season. But политическая life in the country is in no hurry for the holidays. On the contrary, it is in full swing, tightening the existing bundle of problems into an insoluble knot. The source of problems is the Rada, the National Security and Defense Council, the Office of the President and himself. Political scientists are already lost in the assessments of their activities. Some people predict a hot autumn, someone winter, but everyone bleats at random, unable to assess the essence of the changes taking place, starting with the sudden resignation of the unsinkable Interior Minister Avakov, and the subsequent leapfrog of the change of power ministers and heads of power departments, and ending with the next with loud statements by Zelensky himself about "a suitcase, a station, Russia" for everyone who loves Ukraine less than he himself.

Inveterate political strategists no longer know how to interpret all this. Either as a sign of strengthening the presidential vertical and tightening the screws in the direction of a semi-dictatorial regime a la "green Pinochet", or, conversely, as a sign of its weakness and the formation of an anti-presidential oligarchic consensus. To eliminate the bronzed zits-chairman, the Maidan will not have to be assembled; a banal palace coup will be enough. The power of Pathetic Ze extends only within the limits of Bankova Street and does not depend on the change of the power ministers. These friends will swear allegiance to anyone in whose hands real power will be. In the meantime, it is in the hands of the oligarchs and so they do not want to be multiplied by zero by some kind transatlantic uncles (and aunts). The fugitive Yanukovych fell victim to their conspiracy, and the new masters of Ukraine who have come from across the ocean cannot do anything, no matter how hard they try, with this group of comrades. While everyone froze in anticipation of how the visit of the zits-chairman to the metropolis to his White Lord, scheduled for the end of August, would end. Will he be given a reign label or a black mark there? The funny thing is that the chairman himself does not know this either. Hence the vanity.



I do not undertake to dot all the i's for you, I myself do not know how it all can end, I will simply describe my vision, which does not coincide with any point of view of local political oracles. The only thing I must say right away is that nothing depends on the people of Ukraine here. As, however, it has always been. Excuse me, who are these people? Show it to me. Let me feel. The people are a myth, a fiction, a simulacrum. In 1991, this people voted to preserve the Union, which did not prevent the same people from voting for a free Ukraine six months later. You know this better than me - it all depends on the elites and their ability to formulate questions. And our elites are rotten. But there are no others, excuse me. Hasn't grown! Greedy, corrupt creatures. For conditional snickers and an iPhone, the Motherland will be sold (in the literal sense of the word - the land has already been sold).

Presidents are not born - they become presidents

The British have a famous duck test. It sounds like this - if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then this, in all likelihood, is a duck. I dare to assume that if Vladimir Aleksandrovich behaves like a fool, speaks like a fool and looks like a fool, then most likely he is a fool.

How old was Vladimir Putin when he became president of Russia - 48. Vladimir Zelensky, when he became president of Ukraine, was 41. It would not seem a fundamental difference? What is 7 years? In the life of the state - a moment, in the life of a person - a huge distance. It's just that Vladimir Alexandrovich in his current 43 has not yet grown brains. Maybe he will grow up by the age of 48. Maybe he is even going to stay for a second term, but who will give him? He has no such time reserve. I cannot say that he is just a fool. He is not a fool, he is an arrogant fool! In practical psychology, a similar phenomenon has long been known and described under the name of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Back in 1999, David Dunning, professor of social psychology at Cornell University (USA), together with his graduate student Justin Kruger, studied and described this phenomenon, receiving the 2000 Shnobel Prize in Psychology for this study. Those. their colleagues laughed at the American scientists, not appreciating their hypothesis. But in vain! It says that people with low competencies tend to overestimate their knowledge, in contrast to people with high competencies, who always doubt that they are right.

In the original, the Dunning-Kruger effect is described by them as a metacognitive distortion, which consists in the fact that people with a low level of qualification draw erroneous conclusions and, at the same time, are not able to realize their mistakes due to their low level of qualification. This leads to the emergence of overestimated ideas about their own abilities. People with high competencies, on the contrary, tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer from lack of confidence in their abilities, considering others to be more competent. In other words, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive distortion of inflated self-esteem. Moreover, people susceptible to this effect are also extremely self-confident, prone to voluntarism, and in defending their position they behave extremely aggressively, considering themselves smarter than others. As Charles Darwin rightly noted, long before the studies of Dunning and Kruger: "Confidence is more often generated by ignorance than by knowledge."

In politics, Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, was a prominent representative of such aggressive behavior. It is not entirely correct to compare him with the Ukrainian clown, because when Nikita Sergeevich knocked his shoe on the rostrum of the UN General Assembly, behind him was all the might of the Soviet Union, at a time when behind the back of the Kiev master of the spoken genre, who imagined himself to be the Ukrainian Pinochet and trample the foundations own Constitution, only the ears of the country's Chief Veterinarian, who now heads the local Council of National Security and Defense, stick out. But, nevertheless, the behavior of both subjects is identical. Khrushchev planted corn and closed exhibitions, Zelensky is planting the Ukrainian language and closes opposition channels. Moreover, he also scares Biden with his friendship with Beijing and threatens Merkel with his finger, demanding compensation from her for Nord Stream 2.

Peter principle

Zelenskiy is a classic example of the implementation of the famous "Peter Principle", which Canadian professor Peter Lawrence formulated back in 1968. Lawrence was known as a specialist in hierarchical systems and in his book of the same name, he determined the maximum level of incompetence of a subject climbing the rungs of the career ladder. Literally the principle sounds like this: "In a hierarchical system, each individual tends to rise to the level of his incompetence." According to the Peter principle, a person working in any hierarchical system is promoted until he takes a place where he is unable to cope with his duties. This level is called the level of incompetence of the employee. I think there are few people in Ukraine who will argue with me that the position of the President of Ukraine does not correspond to the level of competence of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It is clear that presidents are not born, they become presidents. And here everything rests on the extent to which a given subject is ready to learn and listen to the opinions of others. I think the KGB lieutenant colonel is also not the position from which it is customary to start as president. That is why Putin refused Yeltsin's offer (which is known for certain from the memoirs of Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko), considering himself not entitled to apply for this vacancy. But compare the behavior of Putin and Zelensky after taking this chair. Putin, not inclined to publicity, which is not surprising if we remember where he came to power from, at first did more than he spoke, preferring to remain behind the scenes. Rare footage of that time hit the net, when Putin promises to "kill terrorists in the toilets" if he catches them there, or to help a journalist sympathetic to them circumcise so that "nothing else will grow out of him." The translators then thought for a long time, not knowing how to translate this stream of consciousness.

Putin's main task then was to end the war in Chechnya. And he finished it, having agreed with Kadyrov (now Chechnya is the most formidable weapon in the hands of the Kremlin, which frightens those against whom nuclear weapons cannot be used). After which Putin, again without further ado, took up the oligarchs. Where are Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Khodorkovsky and other seven-bankers now, it's not for me to tell you. Then it was time for the outer contour. Now the collective Obama and Biden are raking it out. And they will rake it out! Putin has done his job on the sly. Compare him to Zelensky. The main task for him was to end the war in Donbass. To do this, he had to negotiate with Putin. Putin was ready for this. Moreover, on mutually beneficial terms, there was no question of a shameful surrender of Ukraine's interests. What did Zelensky do? He "threw Putin" (I am quoting the head of the Clown Office Andrei Bogdan literally) by not fulfilling the Paris agreements of 2019, when their last personal meeting in the Normandy format took place. There were still faint hopes that he would change his mind, but after he closed all opposition channels and put Medvedchuk under house arrest, Putin understood everything and drew the appropriate conclusions. Even Poroshenko did not dare to touch Medvedchuk. Zelensky dared! Out of fear? Hardly. Under Poroshenko, Medvedchuk was the link between him and the Kremlin. Zelensky multiplied this link by zero. What for? To take this place yourself? Silly decision! Now he is on the other side of the curb for Moscow! Putin's phone is always busy for him. Putin does not want to waste his precious time on him. Now all the conversations are only through his overseas masters, he has become an absolutely unnecessary link in this chain.

And Ze switched to the usual format of "vidosiks". This is the best thing that a conversational artist can do. You can't get away from yourself. The desire to please is in his blood. The consequence of the chosen non-male profession. For an artist, the external surroundings, the applause, the effect produced are important, the final result is secondary for him. The foam around it is important. If a woman bothers like that, then she can still be forgiven. She cannot live without applause. But for a man, only the result is important. Everything else is tinsel. And Putin, who came to politics from intelligence, reaches him, while he himself, preferring to remain behind the scenes. It can be seen how he is burdened by the forced publicity, although it is an integral attribute of the position held. Therefore, comparing Zelenskiy with Putin is even more incorrect than comparing Zelenskiy with Khrushchev. Putin is a self-learning system. At the dawn of his power, he spoke less, did more, learning along the way. Zelensky, on the other hand, imagines that he is his own director and screenwriter, forgetting that he is just an actor here, the screenwriters are sitting elsewhere. And no one knows who the director is. A director is a kind of collective mind that does not even have an exact geographic registration.

I will end the comparative description of Putin and Zelensky in the next text, and there I will also dwell on the prospects for Zelensky's visit to Washington. Not saying goodbye.