May 28, 2012
Texas Charm and an iPhone
When I was growing up, I was afraid of two things: my mother and Russians. We had to practice duck-and-cover drills, and even as a grade school student I had to swear each year on a form that I was not a communist. I had nightmares of bombs falling from the sky. I still do sometimes, though I know Commies are now a symbol for other threats in my life.
I don’t think anybody other than Mitt Romney now thinks Russia is a threat to anybody. I think we mostly feel sorry for them — they seem rather pathetic, don’t they? And I don’t mean that in a mean way (not even after yesterday). I mean it more in a southern “bless your heart” kind of way. Mean, no — condescending, probably.
By the time my friend Lou Thompson asks the rhetorical question, “I mean really, do I look like I’d start trouble? Just wait before you answer that,” I bet you will want to read all the way through to the end of her post from The City Formerly Known as Leningrad, St. Petersburg.
comments
It’s a little sad that we culturally conflated the threat of communism with the threat of a nuclear superpower who didn’t like us very much.