https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2022\/3\/24\/22982864\/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-war-brian-klaas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“dictators are often victims of the information bubbles they create around themselves. The sorts of errors that are easily avoidable in democratic systems (thanks to various checks) become commonplace in autocracies, and that leads to profound missteps by leaders.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a mistake that dictators make where they become the victim of their own lies. To be more specific, it\u2019s what happens when authoritarian leaders make catastrophic short-term errors because they start to believe in the fake realities they\u2019ve constructed around themselves.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“it\u2019s the story of 22 years of consolidating authority in a place where crossing the dictator is potentially a death sentence. Putin has been in charge for a very long time, and he\u2019s grown increasingly impatient with people who cross him. The effect of getting increasingly isolated and increasingly repressive is that you get increasingly bad information. If independent media is shut down and you can\u2019t freely discuss things, if people are afraid of telling pollsters what they actually think, if propaganda is so rooted in the regime\u2019s survival that it becomes really what you believe to be true, you\u2019re going to make massive mistakes.
\nI think what happened with Putin is basically the combination of being surrounded by yes-men and being surrounded by propaganda. When you have both of those things, and you\u2019re trying to invade a country that people around you probably think will go badly but they\u2019re afraid to say so, it\u2019s understandable that eventually you start to think, \u201cMaybe it\u2019ll go really well,\u201d because that\u2019s all you\u2019re hearing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,660,167,1545,132,316,315,661,311,158],"class_list":["post-7570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-dictatorship","tag-government","tag-invasion","tag-lies","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-tyranny","tag-ukraine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7571,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7570\/revisions\/7571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}