How To Make Sense Out of Putin, The Kremlin-Club, and Things Today

 There are five general things which you probably need to familiarize yourself to, and grasp:

1.  For all practical purposes.....Putin has become a cult-leader....gotten fairly paranoid....acted bizarre at times....consumed with passion about fighting evil neo-Nazis....being irrational at times....and is erratic.  

You can go back and examine dozens of cult figures and Putin generally fits within their mindset. 

Anyone challenging the mindset of the cult leader.....generally puts himself at risk. 

The cult leader always has the last word on everything.

2.  The Kremlin-Club is a group of a hundred-odd figures who are the insiders and have access to Putin.  Some are politicians....some are military figures....and some are Oligarch figures.  

In the cult world, they are top level....one-step down from the cult-figure himself.  They have the benefits and reign over the rest of the cult-land.  

If they think anyone is easing into status area.....they remove them (if necessary, imprison or kill them).

3.  The cult survives off paranoia.  

There's the 'devil' at the door....twenty-four hours a day.  The cult figure and the Kremlin-Club always believe this.  

4.  The rest of the members of the cult are given 'gifts' on a continual basis....to reinforce the belief that life would not be normal or safe, unless it came from the cult itself.  

Propaganda helps to fulfill this belief.  Sometimes children are used in the propaganda....sometimes a kind soul....sometimes an intellectual....or sometimes the cult leadership himself.

5.  There is some apex (zenith or climax) where the cult figure and the top-level have come to believe all is lost, and some doomsday scenario is then put into play.

Typically, non-cult members sit there in shock....amazed that some people have convinced themselves of a fantasy having nightmare implications.  

I would offer that as much as we (the western world) believed that in 1990, as the Soviet Union ended.....a bold new world arrived....that was a false notion.  

So we are stuck with the cult in a ruination mode, fully capable of killing hundreds of thousands to give themselves some pride or belief in the cult surviving.