Whenever an acute social problem surfaces requiring immediate attention people always focus on the symptoms, never on the underlying disease. Putin’s grabbing Crimea is a symptom. The underlying emotional sickness of human beings that made this act of aggression possible is the disease that is always overlooked.
The following, in brief, is the symptom: As a result of it’s anti-authoritarian transformation, Western countries including Russia are socially disintegrating. Faced with this problem, a strong leader like Putin moves to the political right to take control of the social chaos in his country. He also quickly sizes up Barack Obama the leader of the Western World as a weak and politically ineffectual individual. To further consolidate his power, he decides to take an aggressive international action and seizes Crimea.
Part of the underlying disease is the social disintegration of Russian Society that needs to be controlled. Another part is that the same process of social disintegration to a far greater extent is happening in America. However, America’s social sickness is aggravated by having elected a President who has proven himself to be unable to take an aggressive stand to protect America’s interests in any area, either domestically and internationally.
The deepest level of humanity’s disease is that the American public does not see that they have elected a man who is to a large extent responsible for bringing about this international crisis and the destructive consequences that will follow. The American public’s cluelessness is the central problem.
Charles Konia, M.D. 