That’s right,
President Vladimir Putin has worked hard recently to undo his popularity resulting from his having stabilized the country and strengthened its economy. He said he had no chance of winning the al-Assad Despised
Dictator Award if he didn’t do something to make him despised by the Russian
people. And had he not won the award he would have no chance of winning the
coveted Joseph Stalin Award. Only Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong II have
won that award, though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been nominated.
When asked why he
wanted to win the Joseph Stalin Award he said, “I wish to go down in history
among those leaders who were most hated by their people. I can’t think of any
better way of being remembered.”
When asked who his
inspiration was, he said George W. Bush: “He showed me that it is possible for a
leader to quickly destroy his reputation and go from being revered to being reviled. And I thought the
best way to achieve that was to fire all those in the government who speak
against me and fine protestors a million rubles, which is only $32,000. Still that's enough to stir up a lot of hatred for me since the average Russian makes $640 a month, up from $80 a month because of me. A very big mistake on my part.
And if that doesn’t
do the trick, then what? “I can always reopen the Gulag work camps. They were quite hated in the days of my hero Joseph Stalin.”
One can only congratulate
President Putin. Very few leaders have been clever enough to fall so far so
quickly in the eyes of their people.
