From the comments at Naked Capitalism:

Years ago I met an elderly formerly German gent in Santa Monica, and I like to pick brains when I come across promising grey matter upstairs, and it turned out he was one of the engineers for the ME-262 jet fighter, responsible for the swept wings concept, very impressive!

So after awhile more of scintillating conversation he says to me:

“Young man, where do you think the engines for early luftwaffe airplanes came from?”

I shrugged and said nothing, and he told me:

“They came from the USA, and the airplane manufacturers of the era were only too happy to supply the 3rd Reich with them built under contract, for a price, of course.”

I’ve finished  Putin’s Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls , which is essentially a promo for Phil Butler of Russia Insider, I think.  The Saker features prominently with intros to chapters from folks I’ve been following on Twitter and those I’d never heard of.  If Putin Trolls are a movement, the book gives it a history.

Phil didn’t ask me, but I’ve been thinking about how I came to be a Putin Troll and it goes way farther back.  As the quote above betrays, there are many reasons to believe things have not been the way they seemed for a long time.  Born in 1960, I cut my teeth on the JFK conspiracy, Vietnam war protests and Watergate.  In that sense, I’ve been a skeptic all my life.

I suppose the illegal second invasion of Iraq by W., and its subsequent chronicling by Ron Suskind incensed me, especially as he was but a bad choice over Al Gore.  Glenn Greenwald chronicled Obama’s continuation of Executive misconduct.

Phil Butler’s subjects often mention the Sochi Olympics as the first real evidence the media was in the bag against Russia.  So, when the Ukraine Euromaidan occurred some months later, alternative reports of Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland and US State Dept. neocons under Hillary Clinton had more credibility.

When MH-17 went down over Ukraine, sufficient evidence surfaced to frame it as a false flag blaming Russia.  To this day, I continue to see Tweets from those dedicated to exposing this false narrative.

Reports of hired neo-Nazis battling Donbass military veterans led by Russian general staff made sense, especially after Crimea voted en masse to return to Russia.  The subsequent stalemate of the Kiev oligarchs, surrender of their troops and capture of their amour convinced me of the superiority of 3rd generation warfare tactics perfected by the Russians in WWII.

Hillary went on to break Libya and Syria, so when Trump bested the GOP establishment in the Primary, I was not surprised the media went all in against him.  Indeed, Trump’s campaign promises regarding Russia put me completely at ease, as I’d come to recognize Zionist neocon warmongers and Christofascist useful idiots as the greatest threats to world peace.  His subsequent victory over Crooked Hillary meant a potential end to hostilities in Ukraine and Syria, if not Yemen.

As a skeptic of the mainstream media and educated in the ways of the neocons, I admit disappointment and bewilderment in Trump’s words and actions regarding foreign policy.  Evidence suggests that he immediately allowed the opposition to occupy the vacuum in his administration created by the outgoing regime.  His behavior is regularly appalling, designed as it seems to enrage that very opposition, except for the Zionists who control Deep State and he may deem too powerful.

In my efforts to understand Trump, I often look to Putin, who has successfully battled these same neoliberal globalists for control of Russia.  We’ve had enough time to watch Trump and his antics to see that much of what he is doing is misdirection on a level nearly beyond comprehension.  Indeed, as with Mueller and Israel, he appears to be giving Deep State and the Zionists enough rope to hang themselves.

My concern is that these are not at all the tactics of Putin, who often imprisons oilgarchs for getting out of line, and has established effective no-fly zones in Ukraine and Syria, allowing the latter to eradicate ISIS.  But then Putin has a proven military upon which to rely, whereas Trump commands an impossibly bloated, partisan and ineffectual government in decline.

I like to think Trump has the ears of Putin and Xi regarding these matters, as their enlightened self-interest motivate them to help him put an end to permanent war fueling profits for the oligarchs.

Neoliberalism/Globalism is necessarily on the wane.  This catabolic collapse poses a challenge to governments increasingly controlled by these same oligarchs whom Putin has successfully defeated.  The demise of the Left means ascension of the Right and the cause of Nationalism.  In this struggle, Putin sets the example from Europe to the USA.

Putin is a great American because his example is our future, if we have one.