For all of my youth, up until my early thirties I was constantly harangued by "better dead than Red" Republicans about how I was too soft on Soviet Russia and made far too many excuses for them. Today these same sorts of folks are being defensive of Russia to me.

I spoke to an old friend last night and he made an observation that I must concede had some validity. He said, "I've known you for over thirty years. If Soviet Russia had been able to pull off what happened in Helsinki, you'd be dancing in the street." He might be right and what he said caused me to reflect a bit in order to understand why these "better dead than Red" fans would now be making excuses for Russia. I think I know why. It has long been the case that the Right has been enamored with Fascist Authoritarian regimes. All it took for them to switch sides was for Russia to devolve into a Fascist Capitalist State.

Even given that, I still find it ironic to be in a position of criticizing Russia to Republicans and having them, in turn, defend Russia's actions to me.

But I wouldn't restrict it to just Slavs. A majority of folks I've met here in the "Heartland" have the same marrow infection.

On a somewhat related topic, I was speaking with a friend recently and he was aghast that I said I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, there was no hard evidence of collusion between the Orange One and Russia in 2016. He asked me if I'd lost my mind after having spent 30+ years in the MidWest. I said, "Of course not. There may be no hard evidence of collusion for exactly the reason that you don't say a Puppeteer colluded with his marionette."

And on it goes. Did you catch the hostage tape of his Orangeness yesterday? The man is a caricature of himself.