Putin vs. Trump - Meme Analysis

 

While researching the Ukraine Russian War, I couldn’t help comparing the different insults towards Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in memes.  At first glance, Anti-Putin memes make our Anti-Trump memes look like child’s play.  Some of the Anti-Putin memes were created by Russians, which is risky in a country where outward expression is limited and even punishable if done in public.  I translated a meme on Facebook.  It depicted the Pope telling Putin in Russian, “Believe me, in your case suicide is not a sin.”  America’s lampooning of Trump and campy SNL skits are tame compared to the severity of the sometimes literal gallows humor Putin is getting cyberslammed with. 

Considering the level of evil in Putin’s military actions, it’s easy to see why he is receiving a thousand Kelvins of heat online.  After Putin’s demands were not met with the Minsk Agreements, he invaded Ukraine to fight the Neo-Nazi militia, Azov, but also brutally killed innocent civilians in repetitious shellings.  Millions of survivors were forced to flee Ukraine to bordering countries.  Putin threatens nuclear war, and political leaders around the world are trying to prevent World War III.  Vladimir Putin is giving hell, and catching hell for it - whether it’s from world leaders’ sanctioning or keyboard warriors sending mean memes.  Warlord Putin makes Trump look like a crybaby.

With Donald Trump out of office, he seems benign by comparison, along with his memes.  However, let’s not forget the detention camps overcrowded with illegal immigrants, some of whom were sterilized against their will.  Trump ripped apart families, inspired closeted bigots, and then there’s the insurrection.  So why are Anti-Trump memes weaker?  These cyberpictographs don’t call for his suicide, just ridicule his antics.  He’s usually depicted as a clown or a baby.  On Trump’s juvenile side, he regularly had Twitter-tantrums, whereas Putin has no social media accounts.  The underling who managed the “President of Russia” Twitter account stopped tweeting mid-March, most likely due to the bombardment of angry comments.

Out of curiosity, I accounted the thematic traits of memes for Putin and Trump.  Jokes can be a coping mechanism during hard times.  Each meme depicts a message of what the people think of a person or topic.  I wanted to know which insults were the most common and compare the two hated public figures.

For Putin, I gathered data from his official “President of Russia” Twitter in the comments sections of the most recent four tweets during early June.  The data included picture memes, gifs, and short video clips.  The data for Trump was derived from a Facebook group titled, “Some Liberal Kind of Stuff,” which was created by a friend.  Therein, I excluded any memes I created.  At first I started from the most recent, but they were mainly centered around losing the 2020 election.  Since Putin is slammed for the beginning of a war, I selected the memes from the beginning of Trump’s term.  From there, I was able to gather memes with various traits.

For both Trump and Putin, I selected 100 memes, and I accounted the traits per depiction.  One meme could have multiple messages.  Since Trump is in the past, his pie chart is gray.  Putin’s chart is colored since he is more current.  The pie charts display the top ten themes in each set of 100 memes collected.  The tables contain all the themes I observed while scrolling.  The bar graphs show the number of messages per meme, and how frequently a meme contains multiple messages.

 

Meme Analysis:  Vladimir Putin

Chart 1

The majority of memes against Putin referenced the Nazis, shamed his violence, depicted emasculation, and wished death upon him.  Despite being a world leader, Putin is believed to be weak in character.  The top five ideas conveyed make up 69% of the chart.  The rest sexualized him, suggested Putin is gay, unpopular, a criminal in general, and also sent the simple message of “F&%# off!”  The Ukrainian people want his military forces out of their country, and they make that point clear.

One out of the twelve death-wishing memes involved suicide.  Putin’s legs dangle above his desk, implying he hung himself.  Other deathly memes show Queen Elizabeth sending James Bond to assassinate Putin, Zelensky taking a funeral selfie with coffin-lain Putin, and Angela Merkel instructing Putin to walk into a grave. 

 

Table 1

Some of the messages are simplified for the purpose of fitting into the table.  Memes concerning Putin’s “Appearance” refer to his posture or height, whereas Trump’s appearance jokes are about his weight and small hands.  Losing is specifically about losing the war, not any elections like Trump.

In addition to Hitler comparisons, three depictions likened Putin to Stalin, and two for the Anti-Christ.  One meme compared Putin to Trump.  In other memes, Putin is pictured as a dominant figure (Dom) over Trump.  There are fewer of these memes in the recent comments on the Russian president’s Twitter account, in comparison to the Anti-Trump memes in years past.  There are more depictions Putin as weak rather than dominant.  Also worthy of mentioning is that there are more memes condemning Putin’s violence, and only two memes of Putin receiving violence.

 

Meme Analysis:  Donald Trump

Chart 2

There was a wider range of messages conveyed in memes regarding the former US president.  More than one fifth of the memes showed Trump as foolish, while 15% of the insults were sexual, and 11% concerned Trump’s alleged Russian ties.  Despite all the Trump Baby balloons, only 6% depicted Trump as infantile.  Only 3% showed Trump as being weak, compared to the 10% of Anti-Putin memes.  Interesting to note, Putin is never infantilized in his memes. 

Among the descriptions for Trump, there needs to be some clarification.  “Foolish” and “Stupid” are understandably similar terms.  I intend Foolish to be silly and clownlike, but not shown as a literal clown.  The label, Stupid, refers to attacks on Trump’s intellectual abilities.  The “Clown” category fits when Trump is depicted as a circus clown.  A meme can convey a combination of these messages.  Surprisingly, there are more clown memes of Putin than Trump.

The Anti-Putin memes had fewer Trump associations, probably since the Ukraine invasion is the main focus rather than a fading bromance.  There were far more Anti-Trump memes involving this friendship, especially since the memes were older.  Although homo-suggestiveness was not accounted in tallying the Anti-Trump themes, two-thirds of the memes pairing Trump and Putin suggested a homosexual relationship.

Table 2

A few abbreviations are simple to explain.  “Gen” is short for general.  “Wall joke” is just joking about Trump’s border wall.  Then “BR” is short for bathroom, which leads to the labels that are more awkward to explain.  The themes of “Pee,” “Excrement” and “BR humor” involve bodily waste and bathroom humor.  Anti-Putin memes can be just as gross with the imagery of a dog defecating on Putin’s picture.

The most confusing label in the Anti-Trump table is “actually cool,” which itself causes hell to freeze, considering the meme is from a liberal group on Facebook.  The one meme where Trump looks “actually cool” is when the Saudi leaders and Trump lay their hands on a glowing ball.  It is epic but retains its Anti-Trump qualities due to the meme looking weird.  With some fun editing, it could be a metal album cover.

 

Putin vs Trump:  Number of Messages per Meme

Chart 3

Chart 4

In examining the frequency of messages, I observed that Anti-Trump memes can convey up to six ideas, but 48% are simplified with just one message.  Anti-Putin memes are even less complex, with 62% conveying one idea, and two contained four messages.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but memes tend to be simpler.  For Putin, the memes with the most themes are the viral image of Putin driving an erectile dysfunctional tank, and a lesser known meme of a talking airplane threatening to “eat your family!”  Both convey an idea of weakness.  The ED tank condemns war, and degrades Putin sexually with the limp tank barrel.  The weakness is shown in body and the losing tank.  The peculiar airplane meme conveys a dumb death threat, directed violence towards Putin as a comment, general weakness, and clownishness.

The Anti-Trump meme with the most messages was one of the most vulgar.  It involved Trump and Kim Jung Un in the men’s room having a messy pissing contest.  Themes included ignorance, war in the interpersonal sense, nudity, gross sexuality with the “emperors’ new clothes,” and the obvious pee and bathroom humor.

A meme with Putin and Trump together held a cluster of meanings.  A paternal Putin holds up his Trump toddler.  Trump holds up flowers and a red flag emblazoned with the letters TP.  The T penetrates the P.  There are five motifs in this one.

Conclusive Thoughts

After four years of Americans comparing Trump to Hitler, Putin had over eight times more Hitler and Nazi memes about him, and it has been less than a year.  Is Putin the next Hitler, or are people not objectively considering other historical dictators for paralleling his behavior?  The most frequent concept in lampooning Trump was his foolishness, but he was also highly capable of evil.  These memes reflect the complaints of the people.  The world is hating Putin for his oppressive violence, while Americans just hate Trump for being a fool.  Which combination is worse – dumb and evil, or smart and evil?

 

Resources used:

Facebook (2022). Some Liberal Kind of Stuff. [Private group].

Twitter (2022).  President of Russia. [Russia government organization - verified]. 
Tweet dates: March 14 and March 15.  Retrieved from:  https://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E

Notes:  The memes from the header picture were from both resources used in this analysis.
-Twitter memes were collected in early June.  Twitter comment sections shift over time, especially if there are thousands of comments.

 

Change your Attitude

 

This originated as a Facebook Note.  A bunch of my friends liked this passage, and then I shared it on my first blog, Caroline’s Chronicles of Crime.  I’m sharing it again, because it is still a worthy read. 

Instead of changing your attitude, make the changes you truly want.  Why should you have to change?  Why can’t the other people change instead?  In some ways, it’s good to change in the sense of learning and growing, but everyone needs to grow, not just the one getting fertilized with all the BS.

Changing the world is easier said than done, but changing your attitude is lying to yourself.  The world around you is going to change anyway, for better or for worse.  Some people sip their tea, watching the world burn with the consequences of others’ actions, and other people still believe utopia is possible.

The following is my original passage.  The last few paragraphs were my spur of the moment thoughts on the matter.

Change your Attitude

Whenever anyone is negative about work, school, or the doldrums of life, it’s not unusual to hear someone say, “Change your attitude.”  It’s supposed to be a positive statement, but in my honest opinion, it’s not natural.  It’s not good to just change your attitude about anything negative or painful.  Try telling that to a Holocaust survivor and their terrible memories.  O, just change your attitude and learn to like the Nazis….no.

While on the point of the Holocaust, I remember listening to an inspirational tape by Earl Nightingale, and he was a Holocaust survivor who believed in changing one’s attitude.  I give him kudos because he underwent indescribable cruelty.  He talked about his experiences being vivisected by the Nazi scientists.  The Nazis could do virtually anything, but he realized they could not control his choice of thoughts.  He could either feel like crap while scalpels were cutting into him, or he could change his attitude toward the situation.  I don’t know how anyone could be happy while undergoing vivisection, but I couldn’t call him phony for “changing his attitude.”

I thought about this for awhile because I always thought it was flaky and insensitive to tell people to just change their attitudes.  Then something clicked.  Vivisection is unspeakable enough that medical schools ban its practice on animals.  It’s traumatic for a human.  With trauma, come the mind’s defenses to get through it.  In psychology, they are called ego-defense mechanisms.  Changing your attitude is an ego defense mechanism, specifically Reaction Formation.  In order for Nightingale to get through the torture, he had to form an alternative reaction.

Besides extremes like torture, we are expected to change our attitudes when faced with problems.  For instance, if you hate math, staring at your homework and grumbling for a few hours will not get it done quicker.  If you pretend to like it, it gets done quicker.  It may be fake, but it works, and it’s better than feeling miserable.

Though in some cases, changing your attitude is not the best idea.  Let’s say you work at a department store and you don’t believe in the store’s overburdening policy to force-sell credit cards on every customer, driving more people into debt.  Bosses and stupid posters say “Change your Attitude.”  The reason for this is to keep you in your place.  Retailers have high employee turnovers, so management wants to retain its subordinates by keeping them “happy.”  If you choose to change your attitude, then, OoooHHhh my goooshhhh I LOVE SELLING CREDIT CARDS TO THESE DEBT-LOVING CUSTOMERS……This isn’t the only option.  You can get another job.  Then maybe your boss can change his/her attitude about the employee turnover rate.

You shouldn’t have to change your attitude all the time.  Sometimes it’s a good thing, and other times, it’s not healthy.  If you are in the military, should you have to change your attitude toward killing?  If you are a rape victim, should you just change your attitude toward rape?  There’s always that flaky person who says, “You have a choice.  You can either feel horrible or you can change your attitude and think happy thoughts.”  Try telling that to child porn victim!  Changing your attitude is not the best idea, despite it being advertised as such – it’s not the only idea.

Your initial feelings and thoughts are your truest reactions to any situation.  Changing your attitude masks those honest feelings with alternative, secondary emotions that we make ourselves feel.  It can be an emotional crutch, but you don’t always need a crutch.  It represses or denies our real feelings.  If someone changes their attitude too often, emotional compromise becomes habitual and at some point, the person may be confused on what their natural feelings really were.  They have emotionally lied to themselves so long that they don’t even know what their real attitude is anymore.

Tom Sawyer changed his attitude toward painting a fence to deceive the neighborhood kids to help him finish the chore/punishment.  The idea is that he changed his attitude as a means of deception.  Tricking yourself into liking math will get you through your homework so you can play your video games sooner.  Although changing your attitude may help to an extent, but if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Instead of creating attitudes to protect your true but vulnerable feelings, embrace your honest feelings.  Even though sadness may be horrible, it’s at least real.  Tears release toxins.  Anger is your mind’s alarm system, letting you know something is wrong.  Sweeping your problems under the carpet will build up over time.  Even though sadness and anger are painful, they are a part of your psyche.  Denying the fact that you hate certain things is ignoring part of your character.  Get to know yourself for how you really feel and think.  Self awareness is the first step of self-actualization.

Changing your attitude is not the best answer to life’s problems.  Learning to like a messy house will not keep the cockroaches away.  (Don’t learn to like the cockroaches, either).  Instead, look at the problem from different angles.  Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.  By viewpoint, I mean an intangible standing point to view a scenario.  From there you can draw more than one judgment and develop many attitudes naturally.  Keep your first view, because all views equally exist, just like your attitudes whether you repress them or not.  Instead of thinking like someone else, you can think like many different people.  It’s multi-dimensional thinking.  Looking at situations from multiple angles enables analytical abilities.  Take into account the positive, negative, and neutral standpoints.  If you only think positively, then you are ruling out the negative, which is biased – not positive.

Here are my key points.

1. Changing attitude is Reaction Formation, an ego defense mechanism.
2. Like other ego-defense mechanisms, they can be good or bad.
3. Don’t change your attitude if you have other options.
4. Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.
1. Look at things from multiple stances.
5. Your first feelings are your most honest.
6. If you can, embrace your feelings, and know yourself.

If you are traumatized, don’t pretend you aren’t.  If you hate stuff, you don’t have to pretend you love those things – unless you need to tackle the chores or homework, then just fake it for awhile.  If you have a problem, do something about it.

I’m just throwing this in here.  I once read that some murderer was happy while being executed.  While the lethal injection was being administered, he said, “This is awesome!”  Did he change his attitude or was that his real attitude?

Curious to note, when Earl Nightingale said he changed his attitude towards vivisection, he did not mention what his new attitude was.

 

 

Originally posted: February 5, 2014

Two Hermits

 

There is an essay that I posted in my first blog, which I feel is good enough to share again.  It was a midterm response for a college class, and the prompt was to compare two people reading historical texts at the time they were written.  The books were the Book of Matthew and The Poem of the Cid.  For even comparison, I chose the reader to be the same role, a hermit.

I arrived at Clapp Hall on time, and the midterm started immediately.  There was still one thing I needed to do.  I asked a TA for permission, and she let me out into the hallway to look up one last thing, warning me that it was taking up my testing time.  Outside in the vestibule, I combed through The Book of the Cid just to count how many times God was mentioned.  I noted the number, took the midterm, and aced it.

Here are the links to my first blog, Caroline’sChronicles of Crime, and original entry, Two Hermits.

Then the following is my essay.

Caroline Friehs
University of Pittsburgh
Western Civilization I
Section: 10AM
Date:  3-31-03

Midterm Question:  Take two people from society, one from the time the Book of Matthew was written, and one from the time when the Poem of the Cid was written.  Write how they would have viewed the book.  Compare their views.

My Answer:

This is a comparison between two hermits; one who heard the Cid, & the other, the Book of Matthew.  It’s important to compare the two characters as the same roles in society to make a better comparison of time.

Matthew:  In given the Circumstances, I am a hermit living in what seems to me the middle of no where.  I was a very educated man enough to have read the Bible, and my favorite book was the book of Matthew.  That was well before I became a hermit.  It wasn’t until my incurable illness developed that I headed to my cave for the sake of others not catching it.  I look back at the book of Matthew, and I even kept a copy to read before I die.

                It’s amazing that Jesus performed so many miracles, healing people like me, and it is ironic I was born later than his time.  I wonder if Jesus is with me even now?  I read now, Chapter 8.  In 8:2-3, “And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.  And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean, and immediately his leprosy was cleaned.”  All it takes is his hand, yet in his physical absence, all I will get is his spiritual hand.  When that comes my ailment will be gone through death.  In the same chapter, there is a storm at sea, which Jesus calms.  It begins 8:24-26, “And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.  And his disciples came to him, and awoke him saying, Lord, save us: we perish.  And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?  Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and then and there was a great calm.”  I feel the storm within me, this disease.  It grows more painful everyday.  I wish for the calm to come for me.  I flip the pages.  I feel so strongly about the mysteries of this faith because my death is underway, and the mystery will be solved.  I have faith that I will go to heaven.  In Chapter 13, the Parable which Jesus speaks of, about the sower and the seeds interests me.  I know that I am not the one among the thorns, nor am I the seed upon the rock.  I am still a Christian, and I believe in all the words of Jesus; no other, therefore I am not set out for animals to eat away.  I have strong roots in the good soil, and I have grown into a tree bearing good fruit.  This tree is about to die.  At the end of the book, Jesus is crucified, which he accepts.  I will have to accept my death if I am to transcend to Heaven.

 

Cid:  Long after that hermit’s death, time went on, and there was another hermit.  This is his story.

                Here in the mountains, in Spain, I dwell here for my own security.  I ran away at a tender age, and no one has yet found me.  If anyone does find me, I’ll claim to be severely ill.  By now, no one should recognize me, since I’ve aged so much.  I don’t even know my age any longer.  I ran away, because the dominance of religion in society was driving me into insanity.  The hypocrisies of the bible and the concept of worship give me rage.  To love only God is not to love thy neighbor.  Jesus is not the reason why I am an atheist, yet the arrogance of the people who are less than holy. 

I am not even literate anymore.  The last time I came across a book was a couple of years ago.  Along came a wounded traveler.  I helped him, and in exchange for my kindness I didn’t want any money, for I had not use for it.  Instead I wanted him to read me his book, the Poem of the Cid.  After he had read it, he was astonished at my reaction.  I hold him half of the time I was not listening to the story, but I manage to take note to the great number of references to God and Christianity.  In the book, god was mentioned 143 times, but the majority of the time, praise was given for unholy reasons.  The Cid and his followers killed and robbed people in the name of god, and at the same time not considering thy neighbor’s feelings or lives.  “I win battles as it pleases the Creator,” (p. 153, stanza 122), “I can be certain of defeating them with God on my side,” (p. 143, stanza 114), “overjoyed that by God’s favor they had won the day,” and “Attack them my knights, for the love of God!” – All these quotes cause me great anger over what God’s purpose is.  Yes, god spared their lives in time of risk, but they took other people’s lives, whom no one had the heart to mourn over.  Do unto thy neighbor as thou dost unto thyself.  How could they not recognize their hatred?  Even in the Bible it talks about how you treat others will be how the Father treats you after death.  Justice doesn’t seem to be granted for the Cid.  He always wins, and ever so simply, never even expecting victory.  He thinks his victories of blood and gold are god given.  The only time there is a loss for him, the loss is the treatment of his daughters.  Since he is not the one directly hurt, his sense of self worth is given more fuel to win the battle at the end of the epic.  It’s easy to always be the hero and always win, but he never experienced his daughters’ pain.  What would have happened to his confidence then?

Even though these two characters are hermits, they have polar viewpoints.  In one time period where God is important in terms of God’s teachings, the hermit feels strong about religion, and feels truly concerned about his afterlife.  The other, in times of war and persecution of Moors, becomes a recluse to society because of the misuse of god and religion.

Grade: A

Professor’s note:  I enjoyed this – Your 2^nd hermit did a good job to hide away – a skeptic like that would be a prime target of the inquisition!