The Final Solution: Has Communism Become as American as Apple Pie?

Back in the McCarthy era calling a person a Commie was death. Remember Alger Hiss? Remember General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in Dr. Strangelove with his obsession with “precious bodily fluids” and the movie’s famous line “Well boys I reckon this is it--nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies?” How times have changed! President Trump’s appointment to Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who could easily have been cast in the General Ripper's role, is pal to one of the greatest Commies of all times, Vladimir Putin (and recipient of one of Russia’s highest civilian honors, the Order of Friendship). Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle imagines what would happen if the Axis powers had won the Second World War, but what's unfolding in Washington and Moscow today while not science fiction points to  what will happen if the Russians, like Zombies come back to life from Night of the Living Dead, retroactively gain the upper hand and engineer a figurative recount of the recent election ensuring their victory in a Cold War to which they had already conceded defeat. Is it far flung to believe that the Russians might even play a larger role in the 2020 election to the extent that some of the Russian oligarchs whose penthouse apartments dominate the New York skyline might start to run for election. Imagine Chuck Schumer or Kirsten Gillibrand’s seat threatened by the billionaire potash producer Dimitry Rybolovlev, whose daughter Ekaterina Rybolovleva set a record when she paid $88 million for her penthouse!