Lee Harvey Oswald would be proud. Not one, but a disturbing number of Americans, including Donald Trump, are choosing to believe Vladimir Putin over our intelligence agencies. Some even believe that the Russians did us a favor.

Kneeling during the National Anthem causes a huge amount of angst among a swath of citizens, but siding with Russia in a case of espionage is now fashionable? And I’ll wager there is a great deal of crossover in the Venn diagram if we compared these two groups.

First of all, hacking is illegal in the United States, as is the sharing of illegally obtained materials. I should hope the reason for anti-hacking laws would be obvious.

And when a foreign government spies on our country via hacking, we’re on a whole different level. It’s not complicated. It’s unacceptable. It threatens our national security. Those nuclear missiles aren’t buried in the prairies of North Dakota because we enjoy digging deep spherical holes. The Cold War had nothing to do with air temperature.

Second, Russia, the government of, is not our friend. Putin is not a cool guy on a lark. He’s a KGB murderer. It can’t be rationalized.

Providing aid and comfort to “not our friend” by excusing their actions would be accurate. There is a Communist Party in the United States. Perhaps some of these people would feel more comfortable at their shindigs. All of them are potluck, so it’s best to work on your beet-based hotdish skills beforehand.

Russia isn’t totally Communist any longer by a long shot, but the Party is still a force. Putin is still a card-carrying member. It gets him a 10 percent discount on bear fur underwear.

Read what happened on one Facebook page that published a post by former Sen. Byron Dorgan titled, “U.S. must prosecute Russia for interfering with election.” The audacity!

Here are just some of the comments, which are standard for the topic. Spelling and punctuation has not been corrected.

• “The guy from Wiki-leaks even said it was not the Russians! They are not that sloppy leaving evidence! If you don’t know what’s in the e-mails better read them! Maybe like giving Hillary the questions for the debate? That’s nothing?”

The WikiLeaks guy isn’t the standard we use for truth. And this particular Facebook scribbler isn’t an expert on anything, let alone Russian hacking. Trust me. He doesn’t know the best words.

• “Our own government has “influenced ” elections and outright violent takeovers of so many countries over the years. I have no confidence in our government any longer it’s been compromised since the early 60s. Henry Ford tried to warn us. Ike tried to warn us. We need a reset but I fear it’s much to late for that.”

Our own government has plenty of problems, and before the 1960s, but the issue is Russian hacking.

• “We have interfered with the Governments/elections through out this world. Just the past 8 years our president had interfered with Syria, Israel, Turkey, Lydia, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, the Baltics, African counties and so many others. It is like calling the kettle black. Disgusting little men”

Yes, the U.S. has monkeyed around in the affairs of other countries for many decades. The list is long. I don’t like it, in general, and I can understand why people in some of those countries would be angry. But nobody gets a free one against us.

• “The hackers (Russian if you want to believe that) didn’t write the emails. Corrupt Democrats did. How about we investigate the crimes & corruption instead of the source? Typical Democrat diversion and the same old smoke & mirrors. Too bad they only work on the gullible sheep they have left in their flock of followers”

We can do both, although I don’t know what the crimes are. Corruption? I think they cleaned house at the DNC. But if Trump is your man, prepare for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” portion of this seedy circus. He already has plenty of both, which he stores under the possum pelt glued to his head.

• “Why did they not investigate this before the election was held? If we want good relations with Russia, it doesn’t matter who the president is when our country is doing this to them”

They’ did investigate.

• “I would think Russia is not influential enough to sway the result of the presidency one way or the other. Time to move on. Deplorables Unite!”

A lot of it depends on the gullibility of their desired audience, to gauge the sway, and we’ll probably never know. But we do know that the Russians were hacking, and their intention was to sway.

“Well of course he does … they lost. They have no evidence of it but the US is highly guilty of manipulating the elections in other countries.”

There is plenty of evidence.

And no, China cannot keep any of our stuff they find in ocean.