Prior to our last election campaign, Democrats cast Republicans with worries about Russia as awful people "nostalgic" for the Cold War when nuclear war hung over every crisis. I thought that was insulting and outrageous.
I was eager to stop the Soviets. That's why I enlisted. Heck, behold one of the shirts I wore around campus back in the day!
Hair style from the 1980s redacted to protect the innocent.
And mind you, I didn't mean that as a literal policy proposal. I was well aware of the nuclear arsenals of the West versus the Soviets, unlike the people who were horrified at the shirt.
I wore that on campus, I repeat. Lord knows if you could get away with that now--even with the sudden rage Democrats have discovered for all things Russian.
Back then, of course, I was out of step with the Left which admired Soviet communism despite some unfortunate and totally regrettable broken eggs that would all be worth it once they got a taste of that yummy omelet.
But when we won the Cold War, I was relieved that hair-trigger nuclear deterrence was taken down several notches. I did not miss that. Not one bit.
Especially given that my unit was earmarked for Europe in case of war with the USSR.
Indeed, I hoped Russia would join the West even as I worried that rhetoric coming out of post-Soviet Russia could derail that hope.
And since Russia invaded Georgia, I lost hope that Russia would join the West. Maybe when the last Soviet generation passed the scene, we could revisit that hope. But not now. And it has gotten worse with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, intervention in Syria, and threats to our Baltic NATO allies and friendly but non-allied Finland and Sweden.
But Democrats belittled and insulted any worries about Russia, most famously by President Obama in a debate with Romney in 2012 when our president mocked Romney by saying the 1980s called and wanted their foreign policy back.
Yeah, that was quite a display of presidential wisdom, eh? And our president's fanboys (and girls) loved it to death.
That sense of superiority the Left displayed based on no qualifications that I could see annoyed me far more than Democratic attempts to claim co-authorship in the Western victory in the Cold War given that late-Cold War Democrats had turned against containing the Soviets and accused America of being worse than the communists. The Left loved their Russian-inspired fake news back then (and here's a pre-election Russian version of what the USSR did).
Much as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could be anti-same sex marriage without provoking the Left to demonize them, only to demonize conservatives who until just moments earlier held positions identical to Clinton and Obama; Democrats can declare that they have always been at war with Eastasia--and if you don't see the Russian threat as the Democrats paint it, you must be a Putin dupe.
But hey, I'm an optimist. I welcome my Democratic brethren into the anti-Russian camp. You are late, but I welcome you. I bet if I still had that shirt I could safely wear it again.
I'm sure Democrats will still be there when the going gets rough, right?
