Those old communists – the ones in the br triumphant revolutionary posters with br broad shoulders and eyes on the horizon br where the sun is rising on a better world, br Those old communists – the ones rolling br across the landscape in full revolutionary zeal br with bayonets and bullets and little red books, br Those old communists with thick glasses br and shifty eyes and fingers on the button, those br vodka-swilling gulag-operating identity-erasing br Sputnik-launching shoe-pounding br refusenik-persecuting Hollywood-infiltrating br Boris Badenoff-accented black hats, br who turned grown western men with microphones br into yammering finger-pointing cartoons br with word bubbles about standing tall, br walking tall, riding tall for our Way-Of-Life, br I miss them so. br br Sitting on the sofa in our wood-paneled den in the dark br with the blue television glow of The Munsters, br eating our TV dinners on fold-out trays, br we could point to them as a bona fide scourge and pin br all our troubles, all our short-circuited dreams on them. br br At the end of the spy novel, the mortal enemy br boards a bus and vanishes, leaving behind a br cottage industry churning out Lenin pins and br fur hats with hammer & sickle logos for br tourists in Moscow, Bucharest, Sofia, br leaving us in the lurch. br Who can we blame now - terrorists? br We can only blame them for explosions. br We could blame the commies for noises in the br night, fluoride in the water, Catcher In the Rye. br God, I miss those Godless demons.