Where have you gone, Boris and Natasha?

Iwas a “Sputnik” baby, which means I grew up as a “Cold War” kid. One of the staples of this era of American childhood was the cartoon, “The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle.”

Because all cartoons require a suspension of disbelief, it didn’t occur to wonder why a moose and a flying squirrel might be best friends, let alone serve as America’s last, best hope in fighting communism.

Despite our very limited life experience, there was one thing we kids knew: Americans were good, and the Soviets were bad. That badness was embodied in “Boris Badenov” and “Natasha Fatale,” a pair of inept Soviet spies whose mission to spy on the U.S. was constantly thwarted by Rocky and Bullwinkle; well, mostly Rocky.

No one used the term “cold war” at home. Such concerns were left up to the government, back when we trusted it a little more than we should have. Certainly, it is not what the Founding Fathers intended. James Madison said, “The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

Murder Inc.

Was “The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle” propaganda? Probably. Looking back, it’s clear that the underlying message wasn’t just aimed so much at kids but also their folks; people who had emerged from World War II with good reason to fear the Soviets, who, by the 1960s, had abandoned all pretense of wanting to see a democratic Europe.

Adults were the ones who had to worry whether Nikita Khrushchev meant what he said about burying America. So, perhaps it was the intent of the cartoon’s creators to diffuse some of that fear by making fun of the monster beneath the bed.

But some still seeped through. Imagine being a child and giggling at “Rocky & Bullwinkle” but also hearing that the Soviets had a secret “bombing” map that included Canton, Ohio, because of our steel mills.

Imagine, then, reaching adulthood, only to hear some Americans extolling the virtues of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their reasoning? Putin is a “strong” leader, which diminishes and papers over what he actually is: A lying, murderous, thieving, despotic sociopath.

Even some American evangelicals are in thrall with Putin because of his anti-gay stance, though his regime has killed and/or imprisoned more pro-democracy critics, journalists and dissidents than Murder Inc.

Mom jeans

The same people who clamor about moral ambiguity and whine about encroachments on their rights are “curiously incurious” as columnist Maureen Dowd puts it, about Putin’s incursions to crush freedom in Ukraine and Syria, all while meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Here’s how you know you live in freedom: We laughed at former President George W. Bush’s malapropisms and former President Barack Obama’s ill-fitting “mom” jeans and no one died for it.

Who in Russia would dare tell Putin that, when he’s bare-chested and astride a horse, he looks like one of the Village People?

Despite whatever decency Bush imagined he saw within Putin’s soul, no one today can be that naive. There is no circumstance under which Putin’s Russia can be trusted. None. Any American who continues to spin or defend Putin does so out of pure willful greed, or some twisted definition of nationalism. The thing about Boris and Natasha, they never pretended to be anything else but what they were: America-hating spies.

Once upon a time, the line was so clear, even a child could see it.