Potemkin

“Grigory Potyomkin was a dashing 18th century Russian nobleman who intrigued in courts, smote his enemies upon the steppes and allegedly wooed Catherine the Great. It was while he was courting his nation’s comely Tsarina—-at least according to legend-—that his name came to forever stand for something insubstantial. For Catherine’s 1783 tour of new Russian possessions in the Crimea, Potyomkin endeavored to show her the best face of the empire. As the story goes, pasteboard facades of pretty towns were set up at a distance on riverbanks. At stops, she’d be greeted by regiments of Amazonian snipers or fields set ablaze by burning braziers and exploding rockets spelling her initials; whole populations of serfs were moved around and dressed up in fanciful garb to flaunt a prosperity that didn’t exist (later precipitating famine in the region). Recent historical work has proved the tale in part apocryphal, but the legend stuck. A ‘Potemkin village’ signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.” (TIME, Potemkin Villages, Ishaan Tharoor, Friday, Aug. 06, 2010) In 2016, in countries joined by popular sentiment but separated by riches, emerged two modern-day Potemkins.

Putting on a façade of patriotism and national pride, they rose to power on the wave of populist support, voted into office by people who had grown tired of being marginalized and ignored by the previous powers-that-were that ruled their nations.

In one, he promised to make his country great again. Never mind that his country had always really been great, now as then the acknowledged economic, political and military leader of the world.

There were, of course, many who had not really benefited from this stature. A great number were victims of a global economy that their nation supported, and indeed championed. Their old economy jobs had long ago gone overseas, as their own economy modernized and went high tech.

For various reasons, they could not adapt and keep up with the times. Without the economic prosperity they once had, but still feeling entitled to the spoils of the land, they were ripe for the taking.

Much like the unemployed Germans who readily embraced Hitler as he appeared on the scene, they too were quick to latch on to this charlatan as their savior, the man who would bring back the good times to the country they considered theirs by rights.

In another, he pretended to revive the nation’s pride, for so long trampled and abused by various foreign colonizers and local despots.

Styling himself as the people’s president, he promised to keep an austere lifestyle and eschew the comforts of privilege. Hell, he even endeared himself more to his supporters, when he pledged to jet ski all the way to a land once--perceived as our nation’s foe–-there to plant our flag and redeem once and for all our country’s honor.

And yet, two years down the road for both, where have they taken their hordes of loyal supporters? Have they indeed led their nations to the promised greatness and prosperity?

Well, where indeed.

Make his country great again might as well have been make another country (as in Russia) great again. Once at once feared and respected, his country is now the laughingstock of the world, and primarily because he is its president.

Prone to uninformed social media outbursts, ignorant views and just plainly-biased opinions on just about anything, all he has really done is make his country great no more. Or, quite possibly, the greatest laughingstock the world has ever seen.

And the other? Instead of jet-skiing to the country he pretended to abhor, he has turned around and brown-nosed them like a pathetic bootlicker, even reputedly striking up a deal with them so they could explore and exploit the natural resources in our exclusive economic zone.

Forget reality. Only perceptions matter.

In true Potemkin fashion, they managed to hoodwink their people into believing that they stood for things that were of great national importance.

In the end, their countries ended up just like Gregory Potemkin’s villages-–nice to look at, but empty and rotten on the inside.

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