When Jim wrote "You been at the communion wine again?" I read that as communism wine.

I need to start these threads with me glasses on.

One man's 'useful idiot' is another man's devotion to ideas over practical matters.

I don't know who created the term, I think it is attributed to Lenin, but it can apply to anyone who is regarded as wrongfully enlisted in a cause that might actually not be in his/her best interests or that of the 'class' he/she sposedly is a member of.

You can backdate it and say the French exchequer/ royalty were useful idiots to aid the Americans in rebellion against the English in the 1770s because it both impoverished the French government leading to the French Revolution AND got the English uninvolved with most of America so it concentrated more on whipping Napoleon and colonizing India.

Getting back to the Soviets, they are a prime case of how ideals can be perverted by violence and ruthless pursuit of war aims. The leader of the Soviet secret service was Dzerzhinsky, who made a lot of money for them by getting displaced Russian royalty to give money to agents of the Cheka in the mistaken belief that they were investing in anti-Soviet plots.