Vladimir Putin goes shopping: A cautionary tale

 Scene:  A mom-and-pop shop along a quiet, little street in the hipster district of Scranton, Delaware, because nobody knows where Scranton is.  Besides, who the fuck cares?  Pennsylvania, Delaware, whatever.  It's Scranton.  Anyway... ring!

A quaint, little bell rings as the door opens to reveal 4'2" Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin.  He is followed by an obsequious minion holding a measuring tape, claiming his height to be 6'2".  Yeah, they probably use the metric system in Russia, but it's my story, so a) fuck off, and b) it's all posturing to the West anyway.  Moving on.

Putin strolls through the store, nervously eyed by the exploded eye of the shop owner, Joe Biden.  The bell woke him from his nap.  Putin gives him the finger-gun point-and-shoot gesture universal to douchebags everywhere.  Biden cringes in the gesture universal to wusses everywhere.  Putin... walks on down the hall.

Gazing at glass case after glass case, something catches the dictator's fancy.  A cute, little country called "Ukraine."  Putin stops.  Walks on, backtracks.  His attention keeps coming back to Ukraine.  Something about frozen wastelands filled with miserable people whose language sounds of vodka and belligerence.  This, he thinks to himself, this is mine.  This is already mine.  A part of me.  So much vodka.  So much despair.  So much ennui.  Wait, what's Russian for 'ennui?'  Ukrainian is just Russian anyway, right?

As this internal monolog occurs, the shopkeeper guardedly strolls past the cases with more expensive merchandise like Germany, Poland and anything else with a "NATO" tag on it.  Joe pats the glass with a protective hand, keeping his cautious-yet-blood-filled eye on Vlady.  It takes effort, because he keeps having to look down at shorty-boy, but there he is, little fucker.

Aren't Russians supposed to be big-ass, scary dudes?, he thinks, but then he remembers that Dolph Lundgren was Swedish, and an MIT-educated engineer who is both smarter than Putin, and capable of kicking the little dude's ass.  Whatever.  Anyway, Biden tries to stare down the Russian Napoleon, which is a weird idea, but it doesn't work anyway when you keep nodding off to sleep, and then open your eyes to reveal that sack of blood, and no, I'm not letting that go because it's comedy gold.  Slightly reddish.  Rose gold.

"Can I help you with something," Joe asks?

"I do not know.  Can you?"

"Really?  We're doin' that can/may thing?  Isn't that a bit old?"

"No older than you, old man.  This."  Vlad stabs his finger at the glass case, attempting to impale it through the country of Ukraine.  "I will take this.  Price.  Name the price."

"Oh, uh, oh.  Uh... well, you see, this?  This one isn't really for sale."  Joe looks side to side, uncomfortable.  He just kind of hangs out in his shop, enjoying the location and the occasional visit from the owners of the assorted kitsch.  It's basically just consignment merchandise anyway, but the shop lets the owner play the big man.  When the owners of France and Italy come over, they bring awesome food, and really, everyone who's anyone wants to come to the store to bring their culture and art 'n stuff, and it's kind of just the hip, happenin' place to be, and yeah, Joe's a bit past his prime, making the whole thing just a bit creepy when he gets hug-y and grabby, but that's just Joe.  He's better than the last guy.

And actually selling that consigned merchandise?  He doesn't really wanna do it.

Flustered, Joe just gets twitchy.  He makes somethin' up.

"Uh, OK, so sorry, but the price is actually probably out of your range.  It's gonna be, like, some sanctions, or something.  See?  I mean, way too expensive.  May I interest you in some iPhones?  They won't ship for five more years, until we get this whole chip shortage sorted, but we can't get cars, or anything else either.  So... um... our music is still the best!  Remember when everyone in your country decided that rock & roll was the best thing ever?"

Putin quietly seethes, as the sound of a balalaika plays in his head to drown out the continued droning of the shopkeeper, who tries to distract him from the gem which has caught his mono-focused attention.

"Stop talking, old man.  I take."  Putin reaches into his young-adult sized jacket to remove his wallet, and pulls out a set of "sanctions" notes.  He tenders them to the flustered and shocked, old shopkeeper while he slides open the door to the case with the country of his desire.  He carelessly and brusquely removes Ukraine, heedless of the damage he causes to the country itself and the surrounding merchandise.

"W...wait!  I said it wasn't for sale!"

"That is not what you said.  You name price.  I pay price.  In Russia, we have saying.  It goes, 'no backsies.'  It translates, yes?"

"But... but sanctions!"

"Yes.  Sanctions.  There are your sanctions.  I take Ukraine now.  Is mine now.  This is called 'commerce,' yes?  This is store, yes?  You put out merchandise, you name price, I pay price.  Deal.  What you do now, old man?  You try to stop me from taking Ukraine?  I pay your price.  This is business, or this is something else.  You want something else?"

Biden twitches nervously.  Putin does not, knowing that Biden is nothing but a shopkeeper.  It's business.  Putin has already established what kind of a leader Biden is.  It's just haggling about the price, and everything has a price.  That's business.  The nature of the shop.  The shop that is the world.

This isn't Risk, it's Monopoly.

Unless you want it to be Risk.  Funny things happen in games of war.  The top chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, just lost to a 16 year old kid.  Yeah, I've been using Carlsen as my reference point for strategic genius for a while, but he just lost to a 16 year old kid!  Granted, that 16 year old kid is the kind of genius who demonstrates what a fuckin' moron I truly am, and yeah, I am, but the bigger point beyond my uselessness is that you can be Magnus Fucking Carlsen and still lose to a 16 year old kid.

You feelin' lucky, punk?  Who's the punk:  Carlsen, or Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa?

I love this kid.  He beat Magnus Carlsen.

This?  This is business.  Commerce.  Ukraine just got bought and sold.  I could make the case that Putin would try this with President Liz Cheney and her big, swingin' missiles.  It would have been, to use a term, "risky."  Monopoly ain't her game.  Maybe her big, swingin' badassery would have deterred Putin.  Or maybe he'd have paid his money and taken his chances.  And we'd be riding an even scarier escalator than the 2015 escalator of racist-fascist doom.

What's your game?

Biden had a better read on Putin than George W. Bush did, all those years ago.  So did McCain, and plenty of others.  To be fair, Romney had his number while Dems ignored the threat.  What now?

Yeah, like I ever have anything to offer besides snark...