Dear President Putin!

For the love of God, whatever, you do, please don't leave office in 2008. Ignore the Constitution, change it, whatever. At all costs, hold onto your power like a pit bull.

You see, if you stay in office, that means your neo-Soviet dictatorship is a house of cards that can be blown down by the slightest breeze. It means you simply can't trust anyone, can't find a sycophant mindless enough to blindly do your bidding. It means the neo-Soviet Union could die with you just the way the Soviet Union died with Brezhnev.

But if you leave power in 2008 and an "election" is held to designate your successor, even the ridiculous sham sort of election that brought you to power, that will pretty much mean Russia is doomed. That will mean your nation truly is comprised of spineless lemmings who will continue to do your bidding even at the highest levels of government whether you are there to watch them or not, that your neo-Soviet regime can go on indefinitely, that the only thing that will bring it down is the inevitable economic implosion it will cause sooner or later ("apres moi le deluge") just as the original Soviet Union did. And that implosion would certainly wipe Russia right off the map forever.

There are a bunch of utter morons over here in the West who think it would be a good thing if you left office, that it would show Russia is moving down a path to democracy. These are the same people who fell out of their chairs laughing when Boris Yeltsin said you'd be the next President of Russia, the same ones who said the Soviet Union was a mighty economic juggernaut that would last a thousand years. They're the ones who breathlessly avowed that Russia could "never go back" the the good old, bad old Soviet days. I don't know why I mention this, except that you probably find them just as amusing as I do, so perhaps we can share a little giggle before I tell you that I think you're the locus of evil the modern world, and far more harmful to Russia than all its foreign enemies put together. And don't bother to thank me for the compliment.

Love and kisses,

La Russophobe