Better Dead than Red?

 This is what I grew up with a lot in the 1950s. Because of this one statement men especially (who had been in World War II) told me that I likely would die in a nuclear war as a soldier and maybe I partly believed them until I was 10 or 12 and started to realize my life could be different if I went to college and didn't get drafted. My cousin joined the Navy when I was about 12 years old and he was 17 and that was a little sobering though, because he was off of Cuba in a Destroyer when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened and we almost nuked it out with Russia then. He said it was pretty scary then and the men all had to prepare to get nuked whatever way they could on his ship.

Now those days are gone (Thank God) replaced with a general lack of practicality I find. Somehow, getting drafted or (the fear of getting drafted) that every boy over 12 felt in the U.S. is gone to be replaced with "WHAT?"

So, that lack of reality is difficult to make sense of completely too. Because we still are at odds with Russia and China today even though it is a different sort of thing than we dealt with before. 

For example, the war in Ukraine is REAL and people try to pretend it isn't. Even McConnell (Senate Minority leader) says that likely voting for Ukraine Aid right now along with Israel aid and Taiwan Aid are likely the most important thing he has ever voted on in the Senate. (This is especially poignant because he likely will retire this year from the Senate because of his health).

So, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is how unrealistic most Americans seem to be about what is REALLY going on here on earth and how increasingly fragile our Democracy is.

Sometimes I think "Better Dead than RED" is much more realistic compared with how people think these days. 

However, the other way to look at it is people are going to be this unrealistic until their country blows up maybe. This is the other side of this kind of thinking.

Can't there be some kind of Balance where we don't all have to die suddenly?