LET HISTORY JUDGE
David Remnick on Vladimir Putin’s historic delusion; building a better COVID test; “The Music Man”; Ai Weiwei’s exhibit of fakes; the chill rise of glaive. The Talk in Town - by David Remnick © THE NEW YORKER © - March 7, 2022 Vladimir Putin delivered a bitter and delusional speech from the Kremlin last week, arguing that Ukraine is not a nation and Ukrainians are not a people . His order to execute a “special military operation” came shortly afterward . The professed aim is to “ demilitarize and de-Nazify” this supposedly phantasmal neighbor of forty million people , whose government is so pro-Nazi that it is led by a Jewish President who was elected with seventy per cent of the vote. Like many aging autocrats, Putin has, over time, remained himself, only more so: more resentful, more isolated, more repressive, more ruthless . He operates in an airless political environment , free of contrary counsel . His stagecraft—seating foreign visitors at the opposit...