Red Storm Rising

Apologies to the late great Tom Clancy.  One of my beloved and favorite authors who penned the classic alternate history novel; Red Storm Rising.  Get a copy as it has it all; radical Islamists, communists, submarines, nukes, Russians swarming thru the Fulda Gap into eastern Europe, cold war turned hot.  The first time I picked it up I couldn't put it down.   

Shortly after COVID and early into my retirement I was invited to join a private Face Book group that discussed, argued-about and otherwise carried-on adult-like exchanges covering current affairs.

Regrettably, it seems to have become dominated by one or two particular individuals who have become the masters of cut-and-paste posts.  By that I mean cut and paste social media  meme's and other similar material.  On rare occasions some of it might be substantive; but most of it is click bait.  They seem intelligently clever-enough and capable of producing original content; so I don't get the emphasis of cut and paste.  But that's none of my business;  C'est la vie.

Early-on in my experience on that particular site much of what one individual had to say had to do with Marxists.  Everyone had to be on guard and extra vigilant about Marxists.  Apparently they lurked everywhere and were out to somehow make mischief, meddle in our governance and otherwise topple American society as we knew it.  

I was extra vigilant to be mindful of their potential to live-up to their reputation as No-goodniks.  The dogs and I looked for them daily while on our walks.  I looked for them in town, at the library and at the grocery.  I searched everywhere for these Marxists; even in the woodpile.  And in the end never found one.  At a minimum you'd think the dogs woulda flushed at least one stinkn' Bolshevik.  I came up with nothing.  Sigh.  

Now it seems I have to be on high alert for Islamists.  Apparently, everyone has to be on guard and vigilant over the creeping spread of radical Islam and the looming imposition of Sharia Law.  Considering the level of hysteria you'd think if I drove to Green Bay to go to Fleet Farm I would pass a forest of minarets on the trip.  

Between you and me the Belgian community I live in is Christian; mostly in the Roman Catholic tradition of the Christian faith. There is one Lutheran church just down the road in neighboring Kolberg; where German immigrants settled.

Yet not a single solitary mosque.

See; the Supremacy Clause guarantees there will never be the imposition of Sharia Law.  Or Catholic Canon Law or Judaic Halakha Law for that matter.  Perhaps they haven't read the Constitution?  But I digress.

Naturally, for my social-media soaked acquaintances there has been the recent rise of Democratic Socialists; who they dismissively refer-to as Communists.  Democrats are thusly Commies.  

I happen to know a great deal about this subject because I am a child of the Cold War.  I  don't scare very easily and and certainly Socialists and Communists don't scare me a bit.  That's because my formative years included a steady diet of the Red Baiting and Red Scare tactics.  So, on top of the clutching of pearls over radical Islam I gotta feeling that between now and the midterms we're gonna hear more and more about communism than normal; most of which will be child's play compared to old school, cold war-style, red-baiting.

For what it's worth, Bernie Sanders and candidate for governor Francesca Hong got nothing on this. And she lost the primary.....