Friday open thread: Will you just hurry up and die?

I make no apologies: I want evil people to die. This goes for Vladimir Putin as well as for Donald Trump. I brook no niceties of "I don't wish anyone ill". No. I wish them all the ill they've inflicted on the world, with interest.

Rumors about Putin's health have swirled since he began his misbegotten adventure in Ukraine. Nearing the life expectancy of the average Russian, it's been thought that this is his last hurrah, a last chance to place himself in the pantheon of Russian conquerors, like Peter I or Stalin. (There was nothing "great" about Peter Romanov.)

And now it seems we have evidence of the toll his failed invasion of Ukraine has taken. His army has been mauled. Ukraine is in a strong position. He has fewer tanks than his victims. Rather than Peter I, he'll be remembered as another Nicholas II: an autocrat who took his ill-prepared country into a disastrous war which upended the established domestic order. Tsar Nicholas paid for his error with his life, in a hail of Bolshevik bullets. One would be betting against history that Putin doesn't meet the same fate. At the least, he'll suffer Nikita Khrushchev's fate: overthrown, and sent into permanent house arrest.

As I've always said: Hubris is the one sin the gods will never forgive. When mere mortals try to rise above their level, the gods will strike them down with what they want the most. Putin wanted military glory. Instead, he will suffer military ignominy.

Putin's fate will be a signal lesson to the rest of the world's putative autocrats: You may think you have history by the horns, but history is a bull you cannot tame.

This is your open thread.