My daddy taught me the Golden Rule - Do unto others before they do unto you.
Posted on 02/22/2026 12:46:52 PM PST by Rummyfan
The Lone Star State has played a surprising role in the toppling of the Red Star nation and its immediate aftermath. The Soviet Union began running episodes of the CBS nighttime soap opera Dallas in the early 1980s just to show how eeeeevil those scheming bourgeois Texas capitalist hoarders and wreckers could be. The best-laid plans of mice and Mensheviks backfired when Soviet audiences gazed in awe at the wealth of the Ewings and wanted a little of that for themselves. Even the quotidian details of American life seemed astonishing to them, as Karol Markowicz, now with the New York Post, wrote during her blogging days:
In 1977, the year I was born and the year my father, his mother, his aunt and many other Jews left the Soviet Union (my mother and I left in 1978), the Soviet propaganda machine began circulating a rumor. It went, roughly: life in America is so terrible that the old people eat cat food.
This was…perplexing.
People didn’t quite get it: they have food specifically made for cats in America? What a country!
A lot of things about America remained beyond their comprehension.
But Soviet grandees would eventually see it firsthand later in the decade, and realize, contra Khrushchev, they were the Cold War nation that had been buried. In 1989, Boris Yeltsin, fresh off of visiting the Johnson Space Center, dropped by a Randalls supermarket in the suburbs of Houston and realized the disparity between everyday Americans and Soviet citizens, “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible...
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Fixed.
That’s okay, because writing his adventures as a novel also allows Klienheinz to tell several amusing anecdotes about the history of the Soviet Union, and in one passage, how similar it was to another evil empire to its west:
“It’s funny,” said Petr, to John. “Today everyone acts as if to be a Communist was to be the opposite of a Nazi. They forget that the Communists and Nazis—Stalin and Hitler—were best friends with plans to share Europe between them until Hitler saw the opportunity to take it all and invaded the Soviet half. Till then, your American folk singers like Petr what’s his name . . . ‘We Shall Overcome’ . . .”
“Pete Seeger.”
“Yes, like Pete, were singing songs about how America shouldn’t get involved in the war against fascism, how Roosevelt shouldn’t send them to die for British ideals. Or the Sudetenland.”
Twenty years ago in City Journal, Howard Husock dubbed Seeger “America’s Most Successful Communist,” who lived long enough to have propped up every socialist dictator from Stalin and Hitler to Ho Chi Minh all the way to Saddam Hussein. As Glenn Reynolds likes to say at our sister site Instapundit, “Not anti-war, just on the other side.”
Even Siberia goes through the motions.
Reminds me a bit of the British government and the Amelia phenomenon.
I find the Amelia phenomenon to be enjoyable, fascinating, predictable, and wholly illustrative.
Sounds like it would be a fascinating & fun read. Unfortunately, I already have stacks of books I want to read. It’s never ending...
“Dallas” was tried in Japan. Dropped like a hot potato. That culture didn’t go for married folk hopping into each other’s bed.
An obscure reference to the Khartoum per chance?
Yes!
Khatru, f’n spell checher
Until the Bushes and the US military industrial complex converted a pathetically poor and weakened post USSR Russia into the new boogeyman, I saw firsthand Russians building American Homes. They literally named their streets after the ones seen on US tv. The had pictures and built homes like ours.
We are not natural enemies.
True
My daddy taught me the Golden Rule - Do unto others before they do unto you.
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