by cmsellers » Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:07 pm
Even at the time I knew it was bullshit. Dictators are never actually cool, not even stupid sexy Stalin. I went from seeing him as just another brutal dictator when I first became aware of him that time W looked into his eyes and saw his soul, to viewing him as one of the gravest threats to world peace when he invaded and ethnically cleansed Georgia in 2008.
I was so frustrated my liberal friends and family and Obama didn't seem get the problem with Putin back in 2008 (some people on the far left were actively praising him) that I was going to vote for John McCain until he picked Icebox Barbie to be a literal heartbeat from the White House. (Though now that I realize President Palin might have forestalled the Tanning Bed Troll Doll we currently have...)
As I recall, it wasn't until Putin figured out gay people make excellent scapegoats that people on the left started coming on board, and it wasn't until Putin invaded Crimea and Obama reversed his position that I could count on Democrats disliking him, and wasn't until he helped give us Trump that the far left turned against him.