I’m old enough to remember when one of the worst insults in American politics was “commie lover”– usually aimed by rightwing Republicans at liberal Democrats deemed insufficiently alarmed about the worldwide Communist menace.
And just as Joe McCarthy and countless other Republicans exaggerated the Communist threat within the US and unfairly labeled liberals, there were some liberals who downplayed the horrors of Communist rule in Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba and elsewhere.
So it makes my head spin a little when our Republican president unabashedly proclaims that he “fell in love” with the world’s most brutal and dangerous Communist leader. And when the reaction from his fellow Republicans is undetectable.
