Comment by petsfed

I think the indirection is important in that it obscures who is ultimately responsible, but I don't think it actually diminishes the responsibility. It's less that the stain is spread out, so much as the darkest part of it doesn't look as bad in contrast to those around it.

That is, if I hold a gun to your head and tell you to kill your family or else I'll kill you, you are not absolved of guilt if you do so, but you're also not the most evil person in the room. Put another way, its worth asking (in this strawman I've constructed) "would you have killed your family if I hadn't made you?".

The brilliance of strongmen is that they engineer this culture where everyone around them depends on the strongman for protection from worse evils. I've read repeatedly that in Russia, everybody knows that the propaganda issued by the Putin regime is just that, but they are also convinced that every bit of news they hear from the outside world is also propaganda, so its a question of the devil you know vs. the devil you don't. Basically, "if you think Russian oligarchs are bad, let me tell you about American oligarchs..."