Strange bedfellows

Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin go down in history as two of the most evil men. Both were responsible for the deliberate murder of many millions of people. Even though Hitler was a fascist and Stalin a communist, which in theory were supposed to be the very opposite of each other, their foreign ministers Ribbentrop and Molotov signed a pact on August 23rd, 1939. This was all so that just ten days later Germany could invade Poland and begin its expansion eastward. Then in less than two years, in June, 1941, Germany moved further eastwards by invading the USSR breaking the earlier pact, because of course agreement pacts don’t mean a thing to such evil people.

For most of my life we Western folk have been clear on these stark facts of history. Both fascists and communists were bad, and the future lay with democrats, many in Europe and North America calling ourselves Christian democrats, sometimes with a capital D. My mother would have called herself a Christian socialist, and although that was broadly accepted in Europe since WWII, it has always been looked upon with suspicion in the United States, where we had to have no truck with communists or socialists.

But now in 2017 I’m getting all confused. American evangelical leaders go off to Russia and get wined and dined by Putin folk, Putin plays a major part in getting Trump elected, while 90% of white evangelical Christians vote for him despite the overwhelming evidence that Trump, with his recorded boasts of his sexual attacks on women, is no more Christian than Genghis Khan.

So the Christian right in America has flipped right around from being for Barry Goldwater in 1964 (he lost thank god); to now supporting a sexual assaultant who is pally with a communist. A few years ago Putin was a senior figure in the USSR’s KGB. One could not hold that position without being a solid member of the Soviet Communist Party. Maybe he’s seen the light, but the only light I think he sees is the chance to rip up the western democracies while we have a sinful idiot as ‘leader of the Free World.’

This is why it reminds me of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which lasted less than two years before one side did the dirt on the other, as was intended all along. One thing is clear this time – Putin is far smarter than Trump. This doesn’t bode well for America. It also leaves me asking what the hell do Pence and Tillerson intend to get out of this, two guys who are I think a little smarter than Trump, but who I wouldn’t trust further than I could throw them.

Enough said.