By James Banakis

August 9^th, 2026

Last night I rewatched a movie I had forgotten from my teens, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. The 1966 film a comedy, starring the incomparable Alan Arkin as a Soviet officer whose crewmen go ashore for help after their submarine runs aground off Nantucket during the height of the cold war.

The film unexpectedly, fondly brought me back in a time capsule to that more cohesive America. I even recognized one of the cars as the same model as my father’s Ford station wagon. After 60 years the film reminded me of the Cold War paranoia that gripped the nation.

The most enduring remembrance of that era was that the country was 98 percent anti-communistic. Among the 2% were the usual suspects, Jane Fonda, Angela Davis, Saul Alinsky, and a younger, still angry Bernie Sanders.

In the film the young boy, Pete Whittaker (played by Sheldon Collins), accuses his father, Walt Whittaker (played by Carl Reiner), of being a traitor.  Pete is extremely disappointed that his father chose to cooperate and answer the stranded Soviet sailors’ questions instead of fighting them or refusing to talk.  Pete proudly bemoans that he is probably the only kid in the fourth grade whose father is a notorious “trader” (mispronouncing traitor), prompting his mother to intervene and correct his grammar.

The scene is a major turning point, as the son’s constant badgering and questioning of his patriotism finally awakens Walt to act and attempt to overpower the Russian sailor.

For those of us who lived through the early 1960’s, it was a time of uninhibited patriotism as we all stood together to defeat the common enemy, Communism. The wall separating Berlin was a constant reminder of how the other side needed to keep their people caged in to what to us was a universally despised system. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the brink of nuclear devastation. Most of us accepted that this threat of a cold war becoming hot was a price we had to pay for our way of life.

Like the young boy in the movie, we were all alert to helping root out any Commies. Karl Marx and Lenin crafted their revolutions to be fueled by the dissatisfied working class. The working class in 1960’s America almost universally believed in the American way of life. Except for the civil rights protests most Americans thought the country was on the right track domestically.

The Soviet system was pretty good at building 100 megaton bombs and ICBMs, but not very good at feeding and housing their citizens. Reagan our most virulent anticommunist president, later was to label them the evil empire. His policies lead to the complete collapse of the boated, mismanaged, Soviet 60-year social experiment. At the end of Reagan’s second term the country finally felt we had relegated communism to the ash heap of history. The nation was so far right of center that in 1988 when Micheal Dukakis ran for President, he refused to assume the label of “liberal,” choosing and popularizing the term “progressive,” as less menacing.

So now all these years later we have Democratic candidates winning elections as avowed communists. Ted Cruz recently said, “Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America are full on communists, the word communists sound jarring, but that is who these people are.”

Over 50% of polled Democrats think it’s good to have this group in their big tent of grieved malcontents. Many admit they don’t agree with all their nihilist, anarchist programs, i.e. no prisons, no Senate, no private property, open borders. What happened? How did we arrive at this entrance to the gulag?

Well, a combination of things has taken place over the past 30 years.  The Chinese have replaced the Soviets in infiltrating our culture through media, the universities, and commerce and trade. This resulted in a loss of American industry and manufacturing. Even so, working class and blue-collar Americans are not the ones supporting the new socialist/communist movement. Most of them now support the Republican party. The movement is being supported overwhelmingly by young insolent, over educated, underemployed, self-absorbed resentful upper middle-class brats.

In 1948 Winston Churchill brilliantly said, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” True then and even more relevant in 2026.

Communism has yet to succeed because it attempts to reverse fundamental human essentials like individualism, and the aspiration for personal ownership. When the government controls all production and eliminates private enterprise, the result always is massive inefficiencies, widespread shortages, and a lack of incentive for innovation. The United States today is by any estimation the worldwide leader in the continuing AI revolution and innovation.

Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto in late 1847, and it was officially published on February 21, 1848, in London.  Sixty years before, the Founding Fathers anticipated despotic governments and made sure the constitution included the Bill of Rights. The right to bear arms is the most essential right protecting our personal property and businesses. That’s why leftists always want to first confiscate guns.

Victor Davis Hanson on a recent podcast correctly pointed out the current Democratic Socialists running for and being elected for office are wealthy elites. They have no answer or programs except to criticize capitalism, the very system that enriched them. JB Pritzker is our very own poster boy for the templet. The same is true with Zohran Mamdani in New York, and Gavin Newsom in California. All three born on third base lusting for power.  The one glaring deficiency of all these people is that they have never had to meet a payroll with their own money.

Francesca Hong the Democratic Socialist running for governor of Wisconsin is currently trying to walk back all her communistic beliefs including abolishing Thanksgiving. She insists she’s evolving! We’ve heard that before. It’s a ruse. Wake up Wisconsin.

How successful will this subterfuge be? Like many other sinister power grabs in our political history, this too shall pass. The current Democratic party has pivoted about as far left as most Americans are able to stomach. Through deceit we’ve become vigilant. Democrats succeeded in installing a puppet (Biden) in 2020. In 2024, the tried it again with the chef of word salads, but as Abraham Lincoln once astutely said of the American people:

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” 

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Jimmy Banakis is a life-long restaurateur.  He was an honorary batboy for the White Sox in 1964. He attended Oak Park River Forest High School, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Chicago-Kent Law School.  He claims the kitchen is the room he’s most comfortable in anywhere in the world. He published an extremely limited-edition family cookbook. He’s a father and grandfather, and lives in Downers Grove Il.