[Why] Can US Machiavellians Outsmart the "Russian Bear"? An RT Article is a Case in Point

Phillip Butler wrote a great article for RT on Obama and the Machiavellianism of the US Empire. What seems to have been safely lost on the readership is that the article too is written in a knowledgeably Machiavellian way, which comes out at the end of the article, where Butler turns the table so to speak and indicates that what he was saying about Obama is applicable not only to Obama. So what does Butler say of Obama? That he is no genius, that is, no Machiavellian genius; but he is a zombie, a Frankenstein of a Machiavellian genius ("first rate political scientists around him"). And what does then Butler say in the conclusion in one single revealing sentence? That what he said of Obama applies in his view to Putin as well: "But in studying Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli you’ll soon learn, all princes named Putin, Bush, or Obama, they practice the kingly game. What’s important for us all is the purpose of the underlying Machiavellianism."

Butler is clever. He wrote a great article on Obama and was able to sell it to RT, when he was actually writing an article on Putin--minus all the think tanks which constitute the supposed Machiavellian might of the US Empire. In other words, the US has a plethora of think tanks generously paid and staffed, while Russia or Putin has only Surkov, Boroday and few others.

The few remaining Last Mohicans of the Platonists walking the electronic global Agora can do little either for the Machiavellian geniuses or for these Fankensteins or their monsters (popularly, but, to some extent, not quite wrongly, mistaken for the Frakensteins  themselves) or the many who are deadly set on thinking as Machiavelli prescribed to them.

On this note, let leave the remaining note to Butler and Machiavelli: "Much has been written about Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” but this quote reveals the essence of Machiavellian intent:

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.” - Niccolo Machiaveli"

On a second thought, let's give some thought to Butler's actual ending or to his last thought:

"I think Mary Shelley’s modern Prometheus is upon us. We have this passage from Frankenstein:I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

Correctly combining Machiavelli with Frankenstein, Butler seems to be talking about Obama or "American Prometheus Rising." However, a good reader might recall that Mary Shelly's Frankenstein or "modern Prometheus," as she also calls him, is a zombie made into a beast by a British or Anglo-Saxon scientist. Thus what Butler calls an "American Prometheus" could also mean just a US-made Prometheus (robot-zombie etc.). Butler does not explicitly say that this needs to be Obama. What he does say explicitly is that he is putting Obama, Bush, and Putin into the same class--into the same class of would-be Machiavellian Princes who are not the real Princes or Machiavellian geniuses, but just machine-zombies of Machiavellian geniuses behind them. Furthermore, leaving the reader with the last thought on what turned Mary Shelly's Frankenstein[s monster, artificial man, zombie brought to life from death] against his own maker (the British Baconian scientist) would seem to be even more applicable to Putin than to Obama. For it was Russia, that is, the Russian new elite, oligarchs, and Putin and Lavrov who have had the "fetish" (to use Butler's own key word) for Western recognition, "partnership," and love, if you want, and who feel bitterly disappointed and let down on this score. Thus, reading carefully Butler's piece one is left with an impression that Butler cleverly accuses Putin of being a US/Western Frankestein's creature, a monster whose love for his maker was spurned ... for he should have understood that, from the very start, love had nothing to do with it.

Here, however, one more thing needs to be added. The assumption that the popular" Frakenstein (popularly or vulgarly mistaken for Frankenstein's monster, Frankenstein's creation) and the new (American) Prometheus (and Butler calls this new Prometheus "American Prometheus") is valid in a sense in which the maker of the zombie-slave is to be expected to be a monster too and perhaps even a bigger and more dangerous than the one whom he created from a corpse.

The new Prometheus is a reference to "the Modern Prometheus" of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for which "the Modern Prometheus" serves as a subtitle or rather as the full title of the book, which reads Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus." In Greek mythology, Prometheus is not just a Titan who tricked Zeus, for which he is most popularly known. He is also the Maker of Man. A God-Creator whose creation is, however, limited only to making man, but this creation, as far as we are concerned, might be for us the most essential one.

Mary Shelly thus tells us that the modern "liberal," Baconian Empire took it upon itself to make a new man (Hobbes said this openly in the Introduction to his Leviathan, and Hobbes was Bacon's secretary). Mary Shelly just told the other part of the story. The new man created by the British "liberal" empire is to be a slave-machine, an animated corpse, a man turned into a monster. And also a killer to a point of self-destruction. Romantics, i.e., Mary Shelly, found a plausible apparent design flaw: the zombie-slave might turn against his slave master, his maker. What then?

Butler now appears to say that the Russian elite might be such a Frankenstein's creation in revolt because all that the beast, the manipulated machine, supposedly wanted was the love of its maker and its master instead of getting to love its abuse at the hands of its maker to the point of its willing self-destruction.

One can agree that to a good portion of Russia's liberal class and the elite, this diagnosis applies. But does it apply to Putin too?

Here it might be helpful to distinguish cleverness and wisdom. Machiavellians are very clever, but they are not wise. Milosevic tried to be a Machiavellian and outsmart Machiavellians by trying to make Machiavellian and Faustian deals with them. The last of such deals was his extradition to the Hague into the clutches of a perfectly Nazi tribunal or imperial inquisition. That's where he abandoned the tricks and started relying on wisdom. And the Empire, to her horror, found itself beaten by Milosevic during the trials.

Similarly, both Surkov and Boroday are very clever, but they lack wisdom as Boroday showed when, out of self-love (the opposite of honor and wisdom) he agreed to be interviewed by the most popular liberal presstitute in post-Soviet Russia, Madam Sobchak.

In contrast, what Strelkov lacks in cleverness, he makes up in wisdom and understanding of the code of honor, which, for Boroday, is a strangely Romantic and very unclever. But the fact is that the true lovers of the people are people like Strelkov. For the Machiavellians are in love only with power.

But since most of the article by Butler appears to be a very potent and so well written piece critical of Obama, RT published it, thus proving one of two things: either RT is "vulgar" in the Machiavellian sense or itself Machiavellian.

From the point of view of the Empire (and Machiavelli), love is but a second hand emotion, but a Romantic illusion, which is good  as long as the masses do what they are told; otherwise, as Machiavelli taught the fear and stupidity of the masses is better and more reliable than love.

The "ethos" of this Machiavellian, Frankensteinian, capitalist Empire is summed up well in the famous song of Tina Turner, which a whole generation of the Americans fell in love with and which Tina Turner herself hated, but which brought her so much money and fame:

Opposites attract
It's physical
Only logical
You must try to ignore that it means more than that

Oh oh
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

It may seem to you that I'm acting confused
When you're close to me
If I tend to look dazed I've read it someplace
I've got cause to be
There's a name for it
There's a phrase that fits
But whatever the reason you do it for me

Oh oh
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
Huh

I've been takin' on a new direction
But I have to say
I've been thinkin' about my own protection
It scares me to feel this way

Ho oh
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

(What's love?)
Got to do, got to do with it
What's love but a sweet old fashioned notion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

(What's love?)
Got to do
Huh, got to do with it
(What's love but a second hand emotion?)
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
What's love?
(Ooh, ooh)
Got to do it
Got to do it
What's love?
(But a second hand emotion?)

http://rt.com/op-edge/189592-us-obama-policy-nato/