Its not that crazy, when you consider how the Putin-Era of United Russia has been all about cultivating the image of the Russian people as Bad Chad Trads doing White Guy Patriotism all over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This is a perfect mirror of the modern Republican self-image and has been since at least the Bush 43 Administration post-911. One reason why Bush 43 and Putin got along so well during those early War on Terror years.
I remember a decade after the cold war, people were still eager to go slap around the ruskies.
Sure, but then 9/11 changed everything. Russia wasn’t the bad guys. They were the Tough Guys who would do the Hard Man Things in order to tame the raging monster that was Radical Islamic Jihadism.
Same with China in Xinjiang (which just so happened to have all the same Taliban-style militant problems as neighboring Afghanistan for some reason please don’t Google Operation Cyclone). Xi Jinping was our Based Top Cop Ally in Beijing, helping us fight the encroaching hordes of savage brown people.
Its easy to forget that Americans hated the Japanese back in the 80s/90s for stealing all our manufacturing jobs. And we hated the Indians in the '00s/'10s for stealing all our telemarketer, sales, and remote IT jobs.
All that’s gone down the window with the shifting geopolitical landscape as well.
Its not that crazy, when you consider how the Putin-Era of United Russia has been all about cultivating the image of the Russian people as Bad Chad Trads doing White Guy Patriotism all over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This is a perfect mirror of the modern Republican self-image and has been since at least the Bush 43 Administration post-911. One reason why Bush 43 and Putin got along so well during those early War on Terror years.
Sure, but then 9/11 changed everything. Russia wasn’t the bad guys. They were the Tough Guys who would do the Hard Man Things in order to tame the raging monster that was Radical Islamic Jihadism.
Same with China in Xinjiang (which just so happened to have all the same Taliban-style militant problems as neighboring Afghanistan for some reason please don’t Google Operation Cyclone). Xi Jinping was our Based Top Cop Ally in Beijing, helping us fight the encroaching hordes of savage brown people.
Its easy to forget that Americans hated the Japanese back in the 80s/90s for stealing all our manufacturing jobs. And we hated the Indians in the '00s/'10s for stealing all our telemarketer, sales, and remote IT jobs.
All that’s gone down the window with the shifting geopolitical landscape as well.