Putin the salesman NOTE: An update-related laptop crash kept me from posting this while on the road on Sunday. Two hours of Windows reset and some rebuilding later, it’s fixed. When health insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter spoke here (pre-pandemic), someone asked about those ubiquitous Medicare advantage TV ads. Stay away, Potter advised. Sure, they make the plans sound good, Potter said. They know what you’ll buy. So does former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. The Russian dictator is selling. The American right is buying, and some on the left too. If Putin sounds as if he’s running for president in 2024, that’s no accident, writes E.J. Dionne: “Look at what they’ve done to their own people,” he said of us Westerners. “They’re destroying family, national identity, they are abusing their children. Even pedophilia is announced as a normal thing in the West.” Never mind that Russia is a world leader in sex trafficking. Putin didn’t stop there. In one rather convoluted passage, he came out against same-sex marriage, backed off a bit and then doubled down: “And they’re recognizing same-sex marriages,” he said. “That’s fine that they’re adults. They’ve got the right to live their life. And we always, we’re very tolerant about this in Russia. Nobody is trying to enter private lives of people, and we’re not going to do this.” Well, not quite, but he pressed on: “However, we need to tell them, but look at the scriptures of any religion in the world. Everything is said in there. And one…