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Palintology: A scientific multi-disciplinary approach to the study of empty minds and emptier rhetoric. Palintologists hope to, one day, be able to find a cure for the dumbing effect that such minds have on our own, through their seemingly entertaining and deceptively harmless shenanigans.

Piecemaking: Making peace between warring parties by chopping to pieces either the disputed land or one of the warring parties, whichever one manages to accomplish first. Russia’s first and last neo-Czar Putin the Piecemaker is said to have perfected this diplomatic art both on the international and domestic scene, which is indeed why he was the first and last neo-Czar. He has shown the world how a piece of the brave can really be had. 

Placebo Politics (AKA Ersatz Politics): Political stands that prefer erring on the side on inaction, or, when pressures accumulate, the side of noncommittal action designed to make the politicians involved look responsive, while having minimal actual impact on the situation being addressed.

Plan B: An old invention by the punditocracy of democratic states meant primarily to save their face whenever their analyses, interpretations and predictions prove embarrassingly false, such as when they claim that a certain world leader plans to do A, when, in fact, he planned to do B all along. By claiming that this leader was somehow forced to resort to Plan B, members of the punditocracy avoid admitting that they earlier interpretations were wrong.

Platyputin: See Vladdipus.

Polonialism: The process of ridding oneself of useful idiots whose presence was once deemed necessary for helping their purported allies conduct or legitimate some hapless colonial endeavor but who have since outlived their usefulness. The process could take place a bit too fast and sudden in some cases, and a bit too slow and methodical in others. But, considering the nature of useful idiots and their role, the development itself is often a bit too inevitable.

Polonialist Coup: A coup d’état carried out against a leader who was, for a while, someone's useful idiot.

A statue of Vladdie the Cullminator found in a
little corner near Moscow’s famous Red Square
The PoorPutin: In ancient Russian mythology, the PoorPutin is the name given to a corrupt and cruel autocrat who fends off challenges to his authority by rewarding loyalty and sycophancy among his immediate coterie, and masks his dark side and impulses through frequent and well-orchestrated public shows of joviality and bravado designed to endear him to the masses. The PoorPutin’s personality is so strong and dominant that he is often blamed as well for the evil acts committed by his coterie. It’s on account of this tendency that most deliriologists believe that the majority of Russian potentates described as PoorPutins suffer from a persecution complex, despite being the primary persecutors of their societies. According to the famous renaissance deliriologist, Phried Umbilico, the infamous Russian czar Vladdie the Cullminator was an “excellent example of a traditional PoorPutin, for although he had a tendency to fuck his daughters and eat his wives, he was generous to his friends – to a fault, in fact, as the recently leaked Klanama Papers reveal – and popularly known for his killer joviality.”

Not to be confused with the PurrPutin – a genus of wildcats known to inhabit the Siberian steppes where it survives by digging up and consuming what’s locally known as the Gulag Juice: a dark and rich soil derived from the decaying corpses of former dissidents and purged party leaders long buried in cold shallow graves where it is mixed with permafrost, animal dung, dead hopes and dream, and wasted human potential. According to Phried Umbilico, there is indeed a connection between PoorPutins and PurrPutins, which is why many people tend to confuse them. Almost every PoorPutin, Umbilico notes, is known to have been an avid collector and “domesticator,” if such thing is possible, of PurrPutins.

(The) Postol Syndrome: The phenomenon whereby highly smart people believe, say and do terribly stupid things. Scientists have found a number of causes for it, including: early onset megalomania, late stage assholery, being the victim of a kompromat, and eating one’s own excrement believing that it would taste like chocolate on account of how special one happens to be in one’s own mind. Naturally, scientists see a close link between the first and last cause. The Syndrome was named after an MIT professor who was the first subject of the study that identified the phenomenon as representing its own unique mental disorder.

Pukha and Vladali: Russo-Persian drinks made of the fermented quintessence of shit, self-righteous lies, and illusions of grandeur. Pukha is often consumed during a morning ritual that features a number of executions followed by public bridal showers for the spouses of the executed who are believed to have regained their virginity and could now be pounced upon by the nearest relative. Vladali, on the other hand, is consumed before going to sleep as it is known for enabling sleepers to remember every gory detail of their ghoulish dreams of endless blood-fests and virgin-sacrifices upon waking up.

Pundorons, Pundwits & Pundompoops: a growing assortment of usually quite intelligent pundits who can, nonetheless, come off as extremely dimwitted and downright driveling nincompoops in connection to certain issues where their ideological stands seem to serve as powerful filters through which the dictates of their otherwise sound minds tend to go through before reaching the fact-processing centers in their fact-riddled brains. Thomas Friedman and Farid Zakaria serve as “excellent” examples of this increasingly troubling phenomenon. The rumor that they might be launching their own business venture soon, a sweets shop that will be reportedly named the Zak & Fried, seem to point by itself to their waning prognostication skills. Some of their colleagues have reportedly advised them to acquire instead some shares in the Fisk & Cock (See Under F).

(The) Pussyssippi River: A small river running through the town of Shitswhatswecallit, the rumored birthplace of Bannon the Stiff, the founder of the Bannonite religious sect.

(The) Putinistas: A substratum of so-called pubic intellectuals and politicians who continue to think of other peoples’ freedom and basic aspirations as constituting an unfair burden on them and is simply too much to bear.

Purdogan: The political equivalent of Bennifer or Brangelina, minus the sex appeal. That is, unless one has a fetish for fiends or ghouls. Purdogans are known for their continuous struggle with self-loathing which often compels them to lash out against all those standing around them within a circle a million mile in radius, before taking their own lives, often by proxy.

Purdogatory: An extreme reaction to irony characterized by repeated and vicious recourse to self-flagellation by proxy.