I'm a child of the 80s, in some ways a child of Ronald Reagan, who grew up viewing Russia as the enemy of America and its ideals of democracy and freedom, with Reagan as the figurehead of America's use of global power and influence to keep Russia in check. And that pro-America/anti-Russia sentiment permeated throughout our film culture -- Red Dawn, Rocky IV, Firefox, Hunt for Red October, The Day After, Spies Like Us, etc. . . . . Shit, I ate it up as a kid, and before I had any sense of political awareness and intellect, I identified as Republican until somewhere in the middle of college in the 90s.
And it wasn't just my generation and the 80s. This was prevalent in the 60s and 70s as well. Think the Cuban Missile Crisis that many of our parents experienced in high school or college.
So it's utterly fucking mystifying how that same party of Reagan, those conservatives who grew up with anti-Russian policies and attitudes, knowing that you just cannot get into bed with those communist oppressive oligarch mother fuckers, seem to have no problem whatsoever with (1) Putin's unprovoked, unjustified, and reprehensible invasion of Ukraine, and (2) Trump's gargling of Putin's balls seeking "peace" and an end to the war that doesn't appear at this point to accept any input from THE COUNTRY THAT WAS FUCKING INVADED and may be all or mostly on Putin's terms.
This is fucking unreal.