evidence: Sanders was guilty of minimizing, and even idealizing, these regimes when he talked about Cuba in the early nineteen-eighties, and the U.S.S.R., after his visit there in 1988. His infatuation with the Soviet Union was both understandable and forgivable. He visited just as perestroika was kicking into gear; it was a moment of unprecedented openness and self-criticism in Soviet society, and Sanders described this mood eloquently at a press conference following his trip. Perhaps more important, Sanders was then the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, not a federal official or a candidate for national office. If he wanted to be bamboozled, it was his right and his personal choice. In making this choice, Sanders acted in a way that has long been characteristic of some members of the American left, who gloss over the crimes of totalitarian regimes as though they were footnotes to a greater story, or jokes. This tendency is typified by one of New York’s literary dive bars, KGB Bar, where I have missed many a friend’s book launch or reading because, as I always have to explain, I can no more see myself spending time there than I can see myself drinking at a bar named for, say, the S.S. ("It’s in no way pro-Soviet," a friend recently assured me. Imagine explaining away a Nazi name that way.)