We are good people. In the most basic form all we really want is fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink and secure shelter so we can sleep and be protected from nature when it might compromise our safety. And, of course, we need each other.
That is what the terrorized people of Ukraine want as they protect, with a dignified courage and resilience, their homes, hospitals and country from Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship-like version of Russia.
Russians are good people. They want those basic things which we, me and you, want in life; the things which make Homo sapiens, the bipedal primate with large, infinitely complicated brains, who we really are.
Putin is, what psychologists call, a dark triad psychopath. The malevolent qualities to be in this group are psychopathy, machiavellianism and narcissism. He does not see Ukrainians as human beings, much like he did not see the people of Chechnya or Syria, when he ordered the bombings of the hospitals and day-care centres in those countries, as human beings either.
People like Putin and his circle of sycophants only see other humans as a means to an end, something to exterminate as they try to achieve their goals.
Whether that goal is a deranged nationalism or an incomprehensible and gluttonous version of wealth, Ukrainians, like the people of Chechnya and Syria, are just things blocking Putin’s insane and treacherous goal.
How does Putin manufacture the consent of 144 million people, scattered over 17.1 million square kilometres, to invade and attempt to murder the people of Ukraine?
These days social media platforms are littered with complaints about our free press and its objectivity. Nonetheless, our media is essential, providing collective eyes to the events surrounding us.
Putin has been able sustain his place as leader, on and off since 1999, by having journalists or bloggers, who dissent from his message, murdered almost mafia-style. Writers, thinkers or artists are killed for questioning the message he wants to project to the population.
A few days after Russian troops immorally and illegally invaded Ukraine, Putin ordered a total shutdown of all the television stations, and all social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
The tragic images of Ukraine being destroyed by bombing is unknown to the vast majority of Russians. The state-controlled message is the only form of information witnessed by the carpenters, nurses and other average citizens.
Putin is a psychopath of the highest degree, similar in psychological makeup as former United States president Donald Trump, who also continuously demonstrates dark triad psychopathic behaviour.
The leaders of many countries and large corporations reach their omnipotent position of power because they do not play by the same morals as you and me.
Through dehumanizing entire races, or destroying with insidious weaponry or other means, Putin and other psychopathic leaders are single people with vast negative influence over our basic human needs: secure food and water resources, and stable, safe shelter.
The people of Ukraine are in need of our help right now to sustain requirements for life, which Putin’s war has endangered.
Despite what it looks like these days Russians, Canadians and all Homo sapiens have the potential for good. It is what makes us human.
Robert Skender is a qathet region freelance writer and health commentator, and frequent contributor to the Peak.
