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| Yeah, they were bad guys...but they were our bad guys! |
You know, I understand that they were the reason millions of people lived in fear of nuclear annihilation for several decades. I know that they were the force behind the “duck & cover” drills I learned as a grade-schooler. I get it that they were the puppet masters pulling the strings of those devious VC rats. But…I miss the Soviet Union. I mean, having the Soviet Union around was…stabilizing. You knew who your enemies were…they were those guys standing on top of the Kremlin watching battalion after battalion of tanks & missile carriers drive by on parade. You know, “those” guys with eyebrows so bushy that even Brooke Shields would’ve been envious. Ah, yes…a simpler time. A time when hearing Barbara Billingsley say “Ward, do you know where the beaver is?” was as innocent as a newborn pussycat. A time when everyone knew that when you were watching Batman and Robin beat the snot out of the Riddler & his henchmen it was really a metaphor for the U.S.A. beating the snot out of those vodka-swilling Bolsheviks. Thank you, Adam West, for single-handedly defeating the “Evil Empire,” one tights-clad freak at a time. Yes, a time when the worst thing happening in America was Bob Barker feeling up the new “Price is Right” girl backstage. Ahhh, the good ‘ol days. Don’t laugh, I mean, what have we got now? Where can you point and say “There. There are the bad guys.” Russia? C’mon, they’re just a blind wraith of their former selves, stumbling through the night looking for a handout to keep them going until their next fix. You know, hiring a James Bond look-alike as your President (or premier, or whatever) ain’t gonna make you cool. Face it, most of your former republics have signed on as full-fledged members of NATO. If we fight now, they’re on OUR side. Nah, they’re just a joke of a country now. They’re the place where Parisian mimes take vacations, because even mimes like to laugh every once in a while. Al Qaeda? Well, they have been a convenient target for the past 9 years. However, by now President Bushs’ brilliant strategy of invading Iraq, thus drawing 99% of their warriors into a nice, clean killing zone…and killing them, has run its course. We’re kinda left with a target-poor environment now. Yeah, there might still be a few raggedy heads to count among the caves of Afghanistan, but they’re the bottom of the barrel. They’re like the Volkssturm trying to hold off wave after wave of fresh, new Sherman tanks rolling into the Rhineland. Didn’t work then, won’t work now. I mean, the guys they’ve got left can’t even set their shoes on fire. And, Bin Laden? Well, in case you haven’t heard, Disney just installed his ramshackle skeleton in their Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, right next to the drunken pirate sharing a bottle of hooch with a couple of pigs. We’ve taken out so many of their top generals that they’ve got corporals running their “army” now. And you know how well that worked out for the Germans! Speaking of the Germans, could they be the new evil empire? Well, maybe they’re not the bad guys right now, but if I were you, I’d keep an eye on ‘em. Always watch the Germans… So who’s left? Yep, you know it’s those sneaky, evil ChiComs. Except, this time we don’t have an adversary right in front of our face like the Soviets were. Ok, so actually they were behind us…like, 10 years behind us. Have you ever seen their space shuttle? We were flying ours for years before they rolled theirs out…which, coincidentally, looked almost exactly like ours…hmmm. I say “almost” because theirs looked like one of ours, except put together by a committee of 5 year olds out of used Popsicle sticks. So, those evil Chinese commies are the “new” Soviets…except sneakier. They won’t stand up & slam a shoe on a pedestal, screaming “We will bury you!” They work behind the scenes, selling us crappy toys to divert our attention while greasing the palms of a Clinton or two to get the latest submarine propeller technology. Waiting until countries collapse into a hundred different “-istans,” and then offering to “take that incomplete aircraft carrier you can’t afford to finish anymore off your hands”…at rock-bottom prices. Buying so much of another country’s debt that when they decide to move on Taiwan they’ll have a little leverage to force that country’s navy to stay in Pearl Harbor…ooops, didn’t mean to say THAT out loud. And the Olympics just aren’t the same either. You could always count on hating the Soviet athletes because everyone knew that east bloc judges just flat-out cheated. A Russian ice skater could land right on her ass after blowing a triple-sow-camel-axel-cow-thingy jump and still end up getting a clean “10” from every Warsaw Pact judge…if they knew what was good for them. Now, the ChiComs take a different approach to the Olympics…they train children in facilities akin to puppy-mills from the age of 2 until they’re nothing but Disney-like audio-animatronics, going through the motions with robotic precision. Their judges can’t cheat like the Russians did because the rules don’t allow for same-country judges anymore, but you can sure motivate an athlete when you’re holding an AK-47 to grandma’s head. And, yeah, maybe Russian Olympians looked like they’ve kissed the business end of a shovel once or twice, but they had it where it counts! I mean, when was the last time you saw a Chinese diver with a huge rack? The bottom line is that the two aren’t even in the same league. Back “then” we had an “Evil Empire,” now we’ve just got a bunch of Chinese ghosts sneaking around, looking for an opportunity. You know, if you look up “Evil Empire” in the dictionary it says “See: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” OK, so that might not be true, but it doesn’t discount the fact that half of you reading this actually looked that up on “Dictionary.com.” Boy, if only we had that “Evil Empire” now. Just imagine it. They always wanted to roll west. Through the Fulda gap, right into the heart of West Germany. Armies on the move. U.S., British, German (for once on our side,) and the rest. Navies trading cruise missiles, Marines storming the beaches of Yalta, MiGs getting blown out of the sky wholesale, righteous American bombers blasting Moscow & Kiev (& maybe Hanoi) back to the stone age. Look, I’m not saying there wouldn’t have been a downside to it. Would a war against the Soviets have cost billions of dollars to prosecute? Yes. Would a war against the Soviets have killed millions of innocent people? Yes. Would a war against the Soviets have devastated Europe for the third time in a century? Yes…but it would have been glorious…Harrumph…
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