Maria Butina's cozy relationship with the Christian right:

[slate.com]

I am particularly struck by the contrast between the article's assertion that the Christian Right has a "longstanding fondness" for Russia and even for Putin, and the "red scare", knee-jerk anti-communism that was far more characteristic of evangelicals in my salad days in the last quarter of the 20th century.

I have roundly criticized evangelicals for ceding whatever moral high ground they arguably once had by embracing and enabling Trumpism in exchange for a few tokens of temporal power -- mainly, SCOTUS justices of their liking. But now I'm starting to wonder if evangelicals, the gun lobby, and the GOP leadership, as well as Trump and his administration, haven't all been groomed for the past generation to embrace Russian-style authoritarianism.