A cheeky opinion piece on the “Putin Derangement Syndrome” (PDS) that has liberals losing their minds.
Introduction
“Putin Phobia,” and its corollary mental illness, “Russophobia,” is manifest throughout the leadership of the Democratic Party (and some Republicans); British leaders throughout the political spectrum; and most of the leadership of the EU (exceptions are Robert Fico and Viktor Orbán). The utterances, or rants (if one is uncharitable) of “Senile Joe” Biden, Harris, “Sir Kid Starver,” Boris Johnson, Ursula “von der Lying,” Mark “Rutti Frutti,” Kaja Kallas, et al., have for years been the subject of derision in sane quarters. However, while scrolling my TikTok feed, I saw posts, memes, and comments by ostensibly intelligent Western liberals that prove their ignorance of Russia, geopolitics, and military affairs; and hatred for Putin and Russia.
Comments on Social Media
Commentators regurgitate propaganda in Western media: “autocracy vs. democracy,” “unprovoked invasion,” “dictatorship,” “Putin is evil,” “Putin is a dictator,” “Putin is KGB,” etc., and my favorites, “if we give the Ukrainians another quadzillion dollars, they’ll plant the Ukro flag in Red Square and Putin will be in the dock in the Hague,” or “Putin will kill himself in his Führer Bunker.”
On Russia, ignorance and contempt parallel Sen. John McCain’s notorious assessment, “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country”: Russians are poor, backwards, have terrible housing, healthcare, and infrastructure (bad/no roads, subways, railways, crumbling cities, etc.), and Russians use “outhouses.” PDS patients, psychiatrists will discover, also suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Hence liberal hysteria against negotiating a settlement to the Ukraine War: “Trump will give Putin what he wants,” “Ukraine will win unless Trump surrenders it to Russia,” “Trump is a KGB agent,” “Putin got Trump get elected,” “Russian interference” in U.S. elections, etc.
If American liberals are averse to “foreign interference in U.S. elections,” then quit worrying about Baba Yaga and focus on how AIPAC purchased the White House, Congress, and majority of the governors’ mansions and state legislatures. As Prof. Jeffrey Sachs quipped, “Netanyahu is the worst president the United States has ever had!” 🤪 Putin can only dream of having even one-millionth of one per cent of Israel’s influence over American politics and U.S. foreign policy.
Putin Bashing
Why this level of Putin/Russia hatred in the West? Leaders of the Global South—a geopolitical region encompassing around seven billion of the world’s population—do not harbor similar views of Russia or Putin. Sentiments among majorities of the peoples and leaders of the Global South are pro-Russia and pro-Putin. The twinned maladies of “Putin Phobia” and “Russophobia” are largely-confined to the West (US, Canada, UK, EU, Oz, NZ; one billion people). While some Republicans suffer from these afflictions, a majority of American liberals are indisputably in need of psychiatric assistance.
Western antipathy towards Russia and Putin is not all due to the Ukraine War. Anti-Putin/Russia vitriol has infected the Democrat Party for two decades. Neoconservatives, who are “nuttier than squirrel poop,” once infested the “Grand Old Party” (GOP), but started migrating to the Democratic Party (DNC) under Obama. Neoconservatives enthusiastically-supported Hillary (2016), Biden (2020), and Kamala (2024). Neoconservatives never belonged in GOP, but are welcomed in the DNC. After all, the roots of neoconservatism lie in Communism (principally, with Trotskyism). A snake can shed its skin, but it will always be a snake.
Yeltsin Era
The West loved Russia under Boris Yeltsin (1991–99). The (Bill) Clinton-Yeltsin lovefest is known. Why would the West not love post-Soviet Russia? A dream come true. USSR had fragmented. NATO expanded east and swallowed several erstwhile Warsaw Pact countries. Russia was economically and militarily feeble, and wrecked by a series of social, political, and economic earthquakes.
Investors from the West poured in, purchased assets (factories, etc.) and franchise rights (tobacco, beverages, food, etc.) for pennies on the dollar. The West colonized the Russian economy (“colonized” comes from economics professor James K. Galbraith). Corporations plundered Russia and repatriated wealth, while Russian-Jewish oligarchs raped their Motherland and fled to Israel/West.
Russians say that Yeltsin did just one thing right: on 31 Dec 1999, he resigned and installed Vladimir Putin in his stead. Yeltsin’s farewell speech acknowledged his serial failures (1991–99):
Today, on this extremely important day for me, I want to say a few more personal words than I usually do. I want to ask your forgiveness – for the dreams that have not come true, and for the things that seemed easy but turned out to be so excruciatingly difficult. I am asking your forgiveness for failing to justify the hopes of those who believed me when I said that we would leap from the grey, stagnating totalitarian past into a bright, prosperous and civilized future. I believed in that dream, I believed that we would cover the distance in one leap.
We didn’t. I was too naive in some things, and the problems turned out to be bigger than expected in other things. We ploughed ahead through mistakes and failures. Many people were traumatised by that time of upheavals.
Putin Era
Yeltin acknowledged Putin’s strength:
Why cling to power for six more months when the country has a strong leader [Putin] who can be its president, a man on whom nearly all Russians are pinning their hopes for the future? Why stand in his [Putin’s] way?
The lovefest ended and hatefest began after Putin took office. Why would the West not hate Putin? The man rebuilt the Russian Armed Forces, asserted power globally, and launched infrastructure and socio-economic programs to develop Russia. Russia is a work-in-progress, but much of Russia’s rapid advances in manifold spheres is due to Putin. Hence the hatefest in the West.
Democrats Finally Hate the KGB! 👏
As a veteran of “Reagan’s Regiments,” I find it amusing that Democrats now hate Russia and the KGB (face of the KGB is Putin). During the Cold War, the Democrat Party was an overseas office of the KGB: the Democrat Party was riddled with Communist sympathizers and double-agents, as attested by the “Venona intercepts” (multiple studies), and books like The Haunted Wood by Alexander Vassiliev and Allen Weinstein, and Reds in the White House by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel.
FDR, the icon of the Democrat Party, adored his “Uncle Joe” Stalin, deporter and murderer of millions of Soviet peoples. After the Nazis launched “Operation Barbarossa” (22 June 1941), FDR was anxious to drag the U.S. into WWII to help his beleagured Uncle Joe; and because he didn’t like the model of socialism espoused by Der Führer (okay, I’m joshing! 😉 Republicans, btw, joked of FDR’s Democrats: “apart from the anti-Semitism, what part of National Socialism don’t the Democrats like?” 🤣).
Why do Dems hate Russia and Putin? 🤔 My theory is that Democrats, from before and during WWII, and in the first decades of the Cold War, embraced USSR because Communism was the model they espoused for the U.S. However, once Putin took office, they discovered that Russians are religious, conservative, and nationalistic. Democrats feel betrayed by the country they idealized. They assumed that Marxism-Leninism only failed because it was improperly implemented in the USSR, but realized after Putin that Marxism had not taken root in Russia. Churches and church-attendance thrived; Russians were as capitalistic and materialistic as most Americans; and as conservative and nationalistic as most Texans.
Putin promotes Christianity, marriage, large families (tax credits and financial inducements for each child); outlaws LGBT movements; and cracks down on illegal migration. Republicans, therefore, can identify with Russian nationalism and conservatism, and envy its anti-immigration, pro-church and pro-family socio-economic policies. Concomitant with the hardening of Democrat views of Russia is the softening of GOP outlooks. BBC was fretting about how Americans are converting to the Russian Orthodox Church and holding positive opinions of Russia. Since DEI, LGBT, open borders, and foreign interventions form the foundation of Democrat politics, liberals have additional reasons to loathe Putin and Russia.
Obama, a dyed-in-the-wool Commie, launched the anti-Putin/anti-Russia hatefest in the DNC. Liberals, like sheep, followed the Kenyan village idiot. The marriage of liberalism and neoconservatism—one that will sunder the Democratic Party—birthed the Libyan War, Syrian War, and Ukraine War. Fresh blood in the GOP, meanwhile, is battling neocon holdouts to terminate the GOP’s interventionist impulses:
we are witnessing an ideological struggle between proponents of an America First ‘realist’ foreign policy, particularly regarding Iran, and an entrenched neoconservative faction that is pushing for regime change within yet another Middle Eastern country…. A new generation of right-wing leaders—figures who are notably more realist and restraint-oriented, and less reflexively pro-Israel, such as Vice President J.D. Vance, Elbridge Colby, and influential media figures like Tucker Carlson—are questioning endless American interventionism in the Middle East and whether U.S. interests are always best served by unconditional support for Israel.
—Foreign Policy, 5 May 2025—
It is too early to proclaim “The End of Neoconservatism”; however, while conservatives are having lively debates and battling for the soul of the Grand Old Party, liberals are “stuck on stupid.”
Perspectives 
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