Our Buddies

A weird thing I see a lot is older people being confused that people under the age of 50 don't automatically see Russia as the enemy something something cold war USSR commies. In no way am I offering this up as a defense of Putin or the various Russia-related activities that are happening at the moment, but from the fall of the Soviet Union until very recently it was very much deliberate US policy and, yes, propaganda from the usual media adjacent elements of the blob that Russia was our good buddy. The whiplash for most people isn't "hur dur how can people like Russia???" it's the opposite. When did they become our enemy??? The actual relationship began to sour during the Obama administration for various reasons but "Russia is actually bad now" didn't really become a thing until very recently.