Letter to The New Yorker
Dear Editor
Am I totally bonkers for coming out of my reading of this week’s cover article of The New Yorker (March 6/17) with the feeling that Russia’s Putin is by far the most powerful figure in world politics today? How can I help feeling this way, though, when the article bombards the reader with example upon example of how Putin makes mince meat of the US Democratic party, relegates the Clinton dynasty to ignominious history, paves Trump’s otherwise impossibly rocky path to the presidency, and, outside the US, threatens (by pulling Trump’s strings) the NATO alliance, undermines democracy in France and Germany, and on and on?
And if all this is true, why is it that we react with a mix of a snicker and disbelief when Trump declares (as he has done more than once) that Putin is really very strong and certainly stronger than President Obama ever was? Ought we not, instead of snickering, look at Trump as having had the insights of Evan Osnos and fellow writers long before they showed up in in the pages of The New Yorker?
Ermes Culos
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