masha gibson was a journalist who also had to leave russia for her safety like you did. recently last week wrote an op-ed in the new york times and she said we imagine the villains of history as cutting strategist, brilliant masterminds of war. this happens because we learn about them from history books which we've narrated that retrospectively in events like logic. making them seem predetermined, historians and the readers bring a perception by authority. if a historical event caused some shocking destruction, then the person behind us and i must have been a correspondingly giant monster. terrifying as it is to contemplate the catastrophes of the 20th century, it would be even more frightening to imagine that humanity has assembled unthinkingly into its darkest moments. so then i'm going to say as someone who spent years studying mister and as one of a handful of journalists who have had conversations with him i can vouch for the fact that he is a poorly educated, underinformed, incurious man whose ambition is vastly out of proportion to his understanding of the world.