Most Americans understand what the Cold War was about — a non-shooting war of ideology that began as soon as World War II had ended between liberal-capitalist America and communist-socialist Russia. The two camps, once allies against Nazis, competed for the hearts and minds of the world everywhere, arguing at the U.N., competing in the Olympics and brainwashing the young in classrooms.

After half a century of such competition, the Cold War suddenly ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed dramatically of its own accord, giving America the claim of a liberal-capitalist victory over Soviet communism.

This victory of democratic America-West was celebrated in “the End of History” theory made popular by Francis Fukuyama who claimed that “(With) the dissolution of the Soviet Union, humanity has reached … the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

In short, there was no more need for ideological struggle, hot or cold, between Russia and the U.S. With the Soviets gone, we could now enjoy our guilt-free benefits of “liberalism” as triumphant capitalists were eager to please consumers with all their creative ingenuity and abundance. The liberal-capitalists declared: Consumers of the world, enjoy your freedom — eat, drink and be entertained!

Further liberated by domestic deregulation and global expansions, liberal-capitalism triumphed over communism. Capitalist America won and communist Russia lost, and the world rejoiced.

But, as soon as the Cold War ended with America’s victory, Russia’s new leader, Vladimir Putin, ever unrepentant and ambitious, started the next war — the “Liberal War” — targeting its attack on our free consumption. The visionary Russian leader was convinced that such unlimited enjoyment of entertainment and pleasure made the American-Western population decadent and lazy, inevitably inviting their own downfall. He was still dreaming of a new Great Russian Empire out of the ashes of Cold War defeat.

Putin’s aim in the new Liberal War was nothing short of destroying America-West’s liberal democracy and its decaying consumer capitalism.

In this new battle over triumphant and prosperous liberalism, Russia was now armed with a wholly new arsenal: a generation of deadly cyber weapons that could infect America at its most vulnerable but fundamental weakness — their minds, now highly gullible to propaganda and fashionable social media fantasies. Life in liberal America was slowly disintegrating under well-designed mind attacks from Putin’s powerful cyber warfare. While Americans were deeply indulging in psychotherapy and social media in their individually isolated cocoons, lonely and anxious, the Russian operatives continued their effective attacks on American weaknesses, holding up the sword upon which liberal America would throw itself.

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The Liberal War went on for two generations on the heels of the Cold War: Americans enjoying wide-open freedom of consumption and Russians working feverishly to deploy all of their cyber weapons to undermine American society and reshape American minds.

Who won?

Russians did, with the major coup of electing Donald Trump as America’s president, twice, giving Putin the best possible comrade-in-arms for his pursuit of the Great Russian Empire. Putin’s success in getting Trump elected and gambling on Ukraine has been so great that the Atlantic’s Garry Kasparov called it the ”Putinization of America,” while New York Times columnist Roger Cohen echoed, “Thanks to Trump, a Soviet goal (‘decoupling Europe from the U.S.’) may finally have been achieved.”

Putin avenged Russia’s defeat in the Cold War and celebrated its victory with soon-to-be dismembered Ukraine and NATO.

The war in Ukraine — a proxy contest between Russians and Americans as two contrasting national systems — revealed two very different social character types: Russia’s top-down autocracy in a stoic nation against a liberal democracy with abundant individual freedom of choice. Here, as a war-fighting nation, Russia is far superior: Putin can demand multiple (albeit reluctant) sacrifices from Russians, which America’s liberal-capitalist nation with its scatter-brained citizens cannot match.

By electing Trump as their leader, Americans just sang their swan song for Ukraine and Europe. Thus, the end of the Liberal War only proved that, as widely believed in Russia, neither Americans nor Europeans are for the long haul of history.

Yet, liberalism in America is not dead as a political force, willing to fight to get their still-breathing liberal democracy back from both Trump and Putin. To these liberals, both Trump and Putin embody Big Brother government, immortalized in Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” in which human thoughts and feelings are officially manufactured at will. They see both Trump and Putin as classic Orwellians in their mastery of mass disinformation.

Here comes a new war — the “Orwellian War” — brewing between America’s liberal remnants and the Trump-Putin strongmen alliance. It’s liberals’ present and future struggle, mostly hopeless, to preserve civil liberties against the Trump-Putin juggernaut here and elsewhere.

Unlike their liberal counterparts who welcome every social engineering possibility, both Putin and Trump prefer a more simplified, direct approach to their ruling method: Americans with long fantasy life and Russians with longer oppression and peasantry, Orwellianism fits them perfectly. Putin’s experience can guide and mentor Trump, America’s revolutionary upstart and Putin’s most successful protege in wiping out their liberal remnants.

In this new mind-war, America’s Trumpsters can learn much from Putin as his junior partners: such as how to stage fake elections, shut down the free press, keep oligarchs at bay, or, most importantly, how to make the masses love their own tormentors.

Like the last free man in Orwell’s dystopia, who falls in love with his own executioner, we already love Trump in America as they love Putin in Russia. With liberals relegated to anachronistic stupor in our Age of Digital Deception, the Trump-Putin alliance is poised to make history by remaking themselves so lovable.

Happily, we are burying our liberal past while singing sweet love songs for our leaders.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.