You’re right, but I thought for a long while that Club Random was an improvement on the superficial (and sober) format where Maher would occasionally probe and poke at his guests. Instead, it’s just far more self-indulgent ass-kissing on his part. This Stone segment is just too much for me–he invites a Putin worshipping nutball before the camera and lets him spout nonsense for a hour. I have a lot of respect for productions Stone has put his name on, but this was just a descent into lunacy and babbling.
See that Quora post I linked to:
This explains why Russia is and has always been so poor, despite having the biggest amounts of natural resources in the world and able population. It is the system they have - and they like it that way. Russian society has always been technologically backwards and lousy by its infrastructure, and the ordinary Russian has always been poor as a church mouse. But the State has always been rich, the ruler has always been rich and the ruler’s stooges have always been rich. Just like the Americans, who never admit there is anything wrong in their society and hope they too will one day be millionaires, the Russians like their society just as it is, they identify not as individuals but as the State - and they too hope they can one day be the stooges of the ruler and tap the wealth. To be at the receiving end of the corruption cash flow.
I feel there were, and are, people trying to sell the narrative that a dictator like Putin was forced into a position of power. The narrative is that they were patriots who loved their country but saw it was falling apart under a weak democratic regime. So to save their country, they had to take over and assume dictatorial powers. This story goes all the way back to Sulla and Caesar.
There may have been a handful of cases in history where this narrative was true. But in most cases, a person who becomes a dictator set out to become a dictator. In many cases, they actively took a hand in creating the weakening of the state that they then used as justification for seizing power. They weren’t saving their country from chaos; they were creating chaos in order to assume power. And that’s what Putin did.
Then they are idiots. I remember hearing when Putin took power how he was former KGB and saying at the time this will not go well.
There’s usually an agenda. The people telling the narrative that a dictator is just a patriot who acted to save his country are either trying to whitewash an ally or are hoping to set up their own dictatorship at home.
Like Democrats and Biden?
just kidding