Putin and HUBRIS

If you got a liberal arts education in college you learned about the word HUBRIS. This came up when the gods started  believing their own press releases and pushed their arrogance and absolute belief in their own infallibility to dangerous heights. The Greeks would then show how this brought the god down and humiliated him or her.

You come away from studying this to conclude when people have absurd ideas about their own invincibility they will pay.

This sounded great in college, but isn't so true in life.

Yes, Hitler died in his bunker as Germany collapsed around him. But Stalin killed his generals in the late 30s and still won World War II. Mao practically destroyed China with the cultural revolution and passed away in peace. Steve Cohen built a fortune on insider trading and sits in his big office and laughs at the federal government.

So if you're waiting for Putin's downfall, don't put any money on it. To inflict real pain on Russia, Europe would have to let its citizens freeze to death by not using Russian fossil fuels to fill their gas tanks or heat their homes.

Lately the major energy companies and their Republican lackeys are suggesting we should ship our natural gas to Europe, which would make them a lot of money. We had planned to keep our newly found fossil fuels to make American industry competitive with the rest of the world. If you're waiting for Exxon to be brought down with HUBRIS, I suggest it's time for you to go live on another planet.

Somehow between those classics courses and today, reality arose. Which is why classicists don't run countries.