Better red

For many people the cold war stated in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested their first hydrogen bomb. I was 12 years old and this war continued for the next 42 years until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. During those years many people were Soviet sympathizers not that they so much admired communism but rather they disliked capitalism. They often closed their eyes to the benefits of the free market and concentrated on the downside which they viewed as greed run amok. As the years passed these people became more disillusioned with capitalism and as a result became uncomfortable with the American way of life based on the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This led to the belief that many of these people were anti-American. It all culminated with the election of Gorbachev whom these anti-American types saw as a hero especially when compared to Reagan who they viewed as a war monger. When Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire that was the last straw and they became convinced that our economic system was the cause of many of the problems in the world. Then like a bolt out of the blue the Soviet system collapsed and these people were lost and without a place to hang their hat. They quickly found a new home in the environmental area and better red than dead changed into watermelons, red on the outside and green on the inside. The move toward the greens was slow but steady and exploded with the war on fossil fuels. In the name of climate change these folks declared war on one of the foundations of capitalism call big oil. It is a natural fit for them to close down coal in the name of clean air and to do so quickly. When gasoline went over $4 they had a head of steam and pushed hard for electric cars but when fracking brought gasoline prices down their momentum was interrupted. They then started writing papers declaring the problems with fracking and that is where we are today.