Putin and ISIS - 21st century evils, medieval problems

Putin is an ex-KGB thug, and a thief on an massive scale, trapped in a nostalgic view of the Soviet Empire with a megalomaniac vision of its restoration as his empire and with his Thieves' Guild of oligarchs and cronies, right of the Dark Ages, as its nobility, just like the setup of the Czars and Soviets - a privileged "elite" served by an oppressed populace all equal in their powerlessness and poverty. In the west it is called serfdom or debt-slavery and there is no shortage. It's been an evil with us since civilation started. Puttin smells weakness and sees Ukraine as in a rebellion, against its proper role as part of Russia, that started when his corrupt puppet was thrown out. His fear of it joining NATO may ironically be self-fulfilling as he is pushing it that way with every deceitful action. His need to feed his pride and preserve a ghost empire has caused chaos and death in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq and given oxygen to worse brutes like ISIS. He is willing to kill the people of two countries, including Russians, for his dishonorable goals and to distract from traitorous acts like lying to his people, conducting a secret war, and stealing billions from his countrymen, but he has yet to become genocidal, just fascist in his singling out of gays as targets for hate to redirect his people's growing and justified outrage away from himself. His evil is based in selfishness and is about preserving his own little world, and he seems willing to spread chaos and death to do so, he may plunge us into general war, but only if it serves his purposes. He will not sacrifice himself to do so. He's just overcompensating. A terrible child compared to what he helped let loose.

ISIS is a social focus of hatred (away from self to everyone else) intense enough to set fire to the world,  with a fanatical wish to throw themselves into the flames for glory. They know no bounds. Everything they do is considered holy, but ISIS is evil incarnate, a perversion of all that is true in Islam. They are on Hitler's level, Biblical in their violence with a medieval understanding of reality. They must be eradicated as an organization. They are the greatest armed threat to the world today. They are a bunch of self-loathing, fanatical converts eager to prove their faith, to experience the power and thrill of killing, and to die, in order to cure their self-perceived impotence and gain paradise, while creating Hell for everyone else (who they blame for their self-loathing). They are too blind to see that they follow only one master and it ain't Allah. Everything they do serves the one true enemy.

Putin, for all his pride and megalomania, is just a puffed-up second fiddle. A common, lying criminal in a position of power over a people too accustomed to being treated as slaves and scared of the chaos of freedom. He is no saviour, just another jailer.

Of course, even together, they barely come close to the threats posed to humanity by climate change and gross worldwide inequality, both of which are helping to feed ISIS and destabilize the world politically, socially, and economically. But Putin and ISIS are a good place to start. Working together to stop the evil savages of ISIS would put mere bullies, like Putin in their place and get them, and their like, out of the way of dealing with the bigger messes we have made.

You never know. We work together and solve one or two problems and we might start to like it, and actually learn something.