Yesterday I wrote about the resurgence of the Cold War and Putin’s bizarre moves as his Ukraine invasion sputters to failure. This follow on piece regards some negative commentary I’ve had on the above-mentioned article and whom it came from.

Now far be it from me to be surprised when I take hits from fellow Republicans, generally of the populist variety. Combine that with the regular lambasting I get from the left and I figure I’m doing a pretty good job in making the right sort of opponents.

What surprised me wasn’t the hit, but the foolish manner of the argument. Yes, populists tend to be blut und boden (look it up) types with a very obvious suspicion of them there sneaky forners. Strangely, that doesn’t seem to extend to Vladimir Putin. Some of them just adore him. In that they’re taking a lead from Tucker Carlson, who is quite good on domestic affairs but totally out to lunch on anything approaching national security. He is so loony on the subject that his show has been used as official state propaganda on Russian state television.

Among his crazier notions is that the Ukraine War will inevitably lead to a nuclear WWIII and that poor Russia is the victim of Ukrainian and Western aggression, hence her solely defensive operation in Ukraine. Boo hoo for Ivan indeed.

The Russia as victim argument goes hand in hand per these people with a simultaneous condemnation of Ukraine as not a squeaky clean government. Really? Looked around any government at any time or any place in history? Uh huh, exactly.

By the way, the Ukraine is corrupt line is exactly the kind of Jimmy Carter gullibility that made him a geopolitical disaster and also was the 1960s hard leftist talking point against the South Vietnamese government. The same government that was succeeded by the communist regime that brought us the boat people.

Thus the hits I took online, and one in person, told me to lay off Putin and Russia, lest I be regarded an enemy of populists, Tucker Carlson, and the Greater Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. Not quite kids. This is why.

First, the KGB colonel in charge of Russia went after Georgia in 2008. Did the small nation pose a threat? No. Vlad just wanted to throw his weight around a bit and see if the West would react. We didn’t.

He then took the Crimea in 2014. Were there NATO flotillas in the Black Sea at the time? No. He took it anyway. Not exactly a defensive move.

And the present Ukraine War and the supposed pretext of NATO expansion and encirclement? NATO has been around since 1949 and has never made one offensive move towards Russia. Not one. In fact, the alliance only recently expanded after Putin invaded Ukraine, not before. So there goes the defensive pretext.

This isn’t counting almost 75 years of global aggression, including an alliance with the Nazis during WWII, from a regime that Putin remembers fondly and served for decades. So the myth of poor defenseless Russia is promulgated by individuals with historical amnesia or some who never knew modern history in the first place. Those kind of useful idiots play right into Russian hands.