There was an old joke in my youth that anti-Communists, what we would call "conservatives" today, saw Communists under every bed.
It wasn't true. It was what we would today call "fake news." But the parody was told over and over again by liberals, left-wingers, Democrats, socialists and, yes, even by Communists.
How ironic is it that the same suspects and their ideological descendants today see Russians or Russian collaborators under every bed – or think they do? It seems they believe that today's conservatives and Republicans and supporters of President Trump were somehow, almost supernaturally and certainly unfairly, aided by Russians in the 2016 election.
Yet, even more ironic is the way the architects of this twisted and almost demented, paranoid conspiracy theory are all part of the same ideology and political party that actually sought the help of the tyrannical, oppressive Soviet Union in the bitter days of the Cold War.
By now, I suspect, most informed Americans have heard of how Sen. Ted Kennedy, then considering a bid for the U.S. presidency, dispatched former Sen. John Tunney of California to deliver a letter in 1983 to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov.
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Viktor Chebrikov explained that Kenney was eager to "counter the militaristic policies" of President Reagan. He recalled Kennedy suggesting he could work with the American news media to help organize favorable American press coverage for Andropov and other Soviet officials.
Kennedy proposed arranging for Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters to travel to the Soviet Union to do sympathetic interviews with Andropov.
The whole point was that this effort would advance a bid by Kennedy to challenge Reagan in the 1984 election.
Now that's collusion with a capital C.
Were Democrats, liberals, socialists, left-wingers and Communists in the U.S. disturbed by this act of treason?
Not at all. They didn't even dignify the episode with a comment because the same U.S. media that today is beside itself with Russophobia didn't even report the story or solicit comments from anyone.
That's right. Fake news was alive and well, even back in the 1990s when this story came to light. I was one of the few who reported it at the time when I was still a part of what we euphemistically call "the mainstream media."
I also note that when the KGB archives were opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, brought about, by the way, by the policies of President Reagan, we learned that the Communist Party USA and many U.S. front groups were supported entirely by the largesse of the Soviet Union. It's worth keeping in mind, that, back then, the Communist Party ran its own candidates for president and vice president of the United States with this money.
That's collusion with capital C.
I should say the Communist Party USA no longer runs candidates for president and vice president. Instead, this former wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union instead enthusiastically supports the Democratic Party at the state and national level.
Isn't all that quite amazing?
The irony is so thick it oozes.
Yet, you will never hear or see any of this reported in the fake news media – not in the New York Times, which won a Pulitzer Prize for covering up the genocidal crimes of Josef Stalin, nor in the Washington Post, nor on CNN, ABC, CBS or NBC.
You have only the independent media to thank for informing the few Americans who understand this history.
Kids don't learn this history in school either. The public schools and the academia are too busy teaching the urgency of stopping global climate change, gender-bending and other more important subjects – and mau-mauing about the latest fake-news developments in the mythological Russian collusion scandal.