The cult of Putin

In the feckless corner of America inhabited by those who pine for a "strong leader" there is ever more love for Russia's president.   Vladimir Putin has fired the imaginations of authoritarians who want someone else to tell them what to think and what to do.  What's the next best thing for this aging mostly white male cohort with a disdain for an intellectual black president.   Enter The Donald.  Killing a few of the media scum, invading and annexing another country's territory, intervening in another nation's civil war is all in a day's work for Vlad.  In his quest to make America great again, Trump proclaims Putin's tactics as great leadership.  Much as the Italians of the 1920s and Germans in the 1930s lauded Mussolini and Hitler as strong leaders, some now proclaim Putin's policies as a panacea to solve our problems.  Russia's brief flirtation with democracy is now over, but hopefully there are enough Americans who realize self governance is a messy enterprise without easy answers.