When conservatives go for commies

One of the most bizarre things to come out of the war in Ukraine is the emergence of conservative women who are “Rootin’ for Putin.”

No, I don’t mean the remnant of our home grown commies who miss the Soviet Union and proclaim, “That wasn’t REAL communism.”

And I don’t mean the naïve libertarians among us who lionize Edward Snowden for exposing the dirty deeds of the NSA and throw hissy fits when you point out he is by definition a Russian asset (and now a Russian citizen as well).

I don’t mean Old Right style isolationists who take the position we’ve got enough problems at home and don’t need to spend precious resources trying to set the world to rights.

And I certainly don’t mean the people who are rightly alarmed about playing nuclear brinksmanship with Russia.

Commies are actually simple to deal with. You just have to recognize this is a person who would murder you and your family in the event they were told it would serve the Cause and treat them as a potential, if presently unlikely threat.

Naïve libertarians are frustrating to deal with and like to accuse you of being a “Fed” when you point that out about Snowden. So what? You don’t have to deal with them and as a political force they’re of negligible importance anyway.

Right-wing isolationists, conservatives and more sensible libertarians, are another thing. They have well thought out objections to foreign entanglements that need to be considered. And we may very well have to default to something closer to their position in the future as our ability to project power lessens due to the sheer expense of it all.

No, I’m talking about middle-aged Christian ladies who think Putin is “a great and good man” in the words of one such.

There is a Russian propaganda apparatus that has operated in the United States for just over a century now. It would be naïve to think it went out of business in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

You can see its footprints all over social media. People repeating boilerplate Russian talking points, and some who appear to be more directly plugged into the source.

But traditionally they have aimed their appeal at left-wing intellectuals. The kind who read The New York Times and think the country went off the rails when Adlai Stevenson didn’t become president.

Nowadays they seem to have pivoted rightwards to appeal to social conservatives by crafting the narrative Russia has wholesale rejected communism and returned to its Christian roots.

“I identify more with…Putin’s Christian values than I do with Joe Biden’s,” said Lauren Witzke, 2020 Delaware GOP candidate for U.S. Senate.

In a word, horse pucky.

You don’t get as high as Putin in the KGB if you’re a believer and you don’t get there with clean hands.
Putin is a stone killer who likes to have dissident journalists and political opponents murdered in their living rooms to send a message you’re not safe anywhere. Something Putin fangirls seem to wave off with, “Oh everybody does that.”

But Patriarch Kiril of Moscow and all Rus, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church supports Putin and endorses the war!

So Putin has a Patriarch in his pocket, what a surprise.

For some Putin seems to have the appeal of a charming bad boy, more masculine than any Western leader, skilled in Judo and Sambo, and smooth talking when he wants to be.

Ladies, just remind yourself how that worked out the last time you fell for that line.