The Pain wrote a testimonial to Ronald Reagan when he died in 2004. It still brings a tear to my eye, and I had to think of it again as I watched Reagan’s spawn, the current festering mass of Republican presidential wanna-bes. This is what he has given us.
Even at age twelve I could tell that Jimmy Carter was an honest man trying to address complicated issues and Ronald Reagan was a brilcreemed salesman telling people what they wanted to hear. I secretly wept on the stairs the night he was elected President, because I understood that the kind of shitheads I had to listen to in the cafeteria grew up to become voters, and won. I spent the eight years he was in office living in one of those science-fiction movies where everyone is taken over by aliens—I was appalled by how stupid and mean-spirited and repulsive the world was becoming while everyone else in America seemed to agree that things were finally exactly as they should be. The Washington Press corps was so enamored of his down-to-earth charm that they never checked his facts, but if you watched his face when it was at rest, when he wasn’t performing for anyone, you could see him for what he really was—a black-eyed, slit-mouthed, lizard-faced old son-of-a-bitch. He was a bad actor, an informer for McCarthy, and a hired front man for a gang of Texas oilmen, fundamentalist dingbats, and right-wing psychotics out of Dr. Strangelove. He put a genial face on chauvanism, callousness, and greed, and made people feel good about being bigots again. He likened Central American death squads to our founding fathers and called the Taliban “freedom fighters.” His legacy includes the dismantling of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the final dirty win of Management over Labor, the outsourcing of America’s manufacturing base, the embezzlement of almost all the country’s wealth by 1% of its citizens, the scapegoating of the poor and black, the War on Drugs, the eviction of schizophrenics into the streets, AIDS, acid rain, Iran-Contra, and, let’s not forget, the corpses of two hundred forty United States Marines. He moved the center of political discourse in this country to somewhere in between Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet. He believed in astrology and Armageddon and didn’t know the difference between history and movies; his stories were lies and his jokes were scripted. He was the triumph of image over truth, paving the way for even more vapid spokesmodels like George W. Bush. He was, as everyone agrees, exactly what he appeared to be—nothing. He made me ashamed to be an American. If there was any justice in this world his Presidential Library would contain nothing but boys’ adventure books and bad cowboy movies, and the only things named after him would be shopping malls and Potter’s Fields. Let the earth where he is buried be seeded with salt.
I guess I’m a little older than the author: I had the privilege of voting against Reagan, twice. Sad to say that almost every word of that bitter complaint still rings true for every Republican and the media.
the corpses of two hundred forty United States Marines
240 — how quaint! The first president I could vote against was Bush The Dumber, so I got to vote against all that and *thousands* of dead soldiers. Did Reagan fuck up countries to the tune of millions of displaced people, or was he only able to manage hundreds of thousands?
The real question is: How do we fix anything?
It was bad enough when the Republican Party got eaten by the Reagan cancer. Now, the Democratic Party is a lost cause (though Sanders, Warren, etc seem to be making a last stand), and soon it’ll all become moot as Congress is planning to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership and formally abdicate their authority to govern at all in favor of an international cartel of for-profit corporate thieves.
Everything in that quote is true, but at least for
Reagan had the happy cooperation of the Democratic Congress, who patted themselves on the back for closing horrifying warehouses for the mentally ill, but couldn’t be bothered to pay for actually helping the
victimspatients.Actually a lot of people with schizophrenia were released from institutions under Kennedy. It was a good idea but they did not set aside enough money to have comprehensive treatment in the community. About 40-50% of the homeless javelin a mental illness
Me too, and I also had the privilege of voting against him twice. Didn’t make me feel much better.
numerobis @ 1:
Bush Jr wouldn’t have had a shot at being killer in chief if not for Reagan. The damage he [Reagan] did is near incalculable.
woof. I rarely post. But this is the big noise. As we sink into the new century, I stick my hand above the slime to wave adieu to the remaining sane. Perhaps in 200 years, the remnants of the west will reform a rational society out of the tattered remains of ours. Then tell them–we wish you well–and beware–there are those who would rather be king of an anthill then duke of the universe.
Reagan is the first president I can remember.
Shortly after his death, I was hired to help someone who was writing a book about Reagan’s leadership. I was given a list of leadership qualities and told to find examples of Reagan demonstrating them.
I couldn’t find any.
I don’t know if the book was ever actually published or not, but if it was I really hope that I was never actually credited in it.
I remember my dad being really upset that Reagan was the Republican nominee. He remembered Reagan from when he was governor of California and nominating Reagan for the presidency killed my dad’s affiliation with the Republican Party dead.
Well, except that he did stay registered as Republican so that he could vote against Dannemeyer twice.
I haven’t had to think about Dannemeyer in years(yay!) but he was a wing nut Republican in a very safely Republican federal representative seat in Orange County. Dad thought he was a horrible disgrace of a politician. Dad’s probably lucky he’s not around to see how far the party of Lincoln has fallen, because the current right wing looks a great deal like Dannemeyer.
Dannemeyer eventually gave up his safe representative seat to run for Senate, and got justifiably creamed in the election.
Speaking of those whose mendacity and madness have long passed the point where anyone could disentangle them, this 2012 Baffler piece by Rick Perlstein provides a dismally illuminating history (h/t: Paul Krugman.
I didn’t vote for Reagan twice. He started my way to totally ignoring the Rethug party. I could see the direction they were headed in before he was elected.
Reagan was a dunce and a liar. One of his most famous assertions was: “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” He claimed that sulfur dioxide emitted from Mount St. Helens was greater than that emitted by cars over a 10-year period. In actuality cars emit 40 times in one day what Mount St. Helens released in a day at its peak activity.
posted on the wrong thread some how?
truer words were never spoken!
the things he said sounded different if I did not see him say them (on TV) but only heard him on the radio
uncle frogy
Let’s not overlook the man’s greatest legacy. Before Reagan, you could always find plenty of cranks who had nothing better to do than to sit around blaming everything they thought was wrong about the country on the eedjits on Washington DC. Both parties pretty much ignored them, because after all, if you went to all the trouble of trying to become a part of the government, that usually meant that you thought it was good for _something_.
Ronnie’s special genius was the realization that there were enough of these cranks to actually form an important block in one of the major parties. Of course, he himself had no more intention of actually dismantling the government than anyone who came before him. But he figured out how to harness the wrath of that segment of the electorate behind him, because after all, what could possibly go wrong with that strategy?
It’s a little scary to think that Reagan was a moderate by modern Republican standards. Reagan actually signed off on a tax increase while being President, something I simply can’t imagine any modern Republican president doing unless it was a regressive increase being sold as “broadening the tax base”.
Not that it makes up for him ending free education in the UC System when he was Governor of California.
I was 8 on election day in 1980. I spent the day at my grand parents house, watching the results roll in. I remember clearly that I was devastated, and I remember it clearly.
What I don’t recall is my family being at all political so I have a hard time attributing my support for Carter to the influence of my environment.
At 8, I instinctively recognized that Carter was a good man and Reagan was a sleazy con-man.
@4. My adopted Uncle is a paranoid schitzophrenic. I can’t attest to what did or didn’t happen under Kennedy, but I do remember my family fighting the closing of mental health facilities that occurred under Reagan.
One neat trick that was baked into the system was the remaining institutions ability to get around court-mandated institutionalizations by transferring patients from one facility to another. A judge would order my crazy uncle held for treatment at Institution A.. just because he heard voices in his head and he walked the streets with a steak knife to protect himself from the people that were out to get him. But the law said the order was tied to the institution not the patient so Institution A would just transfer him to Institution B. We’d find out about it after he show up on my Grandparents doorstep.
As long as we’re assigning historical blame, I place all the blame for both Reagan and Bush on the shoulders of Gerald Ford. When he preemptively pardoned Richard Nixon — for crimes which, at this point, seem minor — he told the entire world that the President of the United States could break any law, at will, and be guaranteed to get away with it. (A doctrine which Obama gave his own seal of approval with “look forward, not backward” and an utter refusal to prosecute the Bush administration for their many wrongs.) And it’s pretty much been a downward spiral ever since, because it has merely been a question of getting the citizenry acclimatized to massive corruption from both major parties. Anyone remember ABSCAM?
He was greatly admired by our Thatcher who left her own poisonous legacy in the UK. The truly despicable behaviour of the present Westminster government would have been unthinkable before her. Even our unelected second chamber, the House of Lords has temporarily blocked some of the worst of their behaviour.
While respecting your many achievements and having our own political shortcomings, there are three things we Europeans just can’t understand about the American mind: The lack of gun control, the opposition to public health care, and the general admiration for Ronald Reagan.
It sounds like declaring cancer a good thing. And this seems to be a sentiment usually shared by even the right-wingers here.
#19 coldthinker
I just don’t think that’s true, unfortunately. I think you may be living in a left-leaning bubble.
Thatcher has already been mentioned above, and she is still very much admired by conservatives in Britain and Europe.
In my home country, Denmark, three members of the liberal (centre-right) party, Venstre; the current minister of justice Søren Pind, former minister of climate and environment Lykke Friis, and former minister of foreign affairs and former chairman of Venstre, Uffe Ellemann Jensen, together founded the Danish Reagan Society to celebrate the legacy of Reagan. And Denmark is supposed to be some kind of socialist utopia.
Lots of right-leaning political elites in Europe love them some Reagan. Europe has drifted so far to the right on economic thinking. The right wing just doesn’t have strong religious evangelical component, and they haven’t gotten as far in terms of actually dismantling the welfare state. Even the Social Democrats in Denmark spouted supply-side economic arguments and tore apart the social safety net when they recently governed.
Speaking of not checking facts: The Taliban didn’t even exist until 1994, a few administrations after Reagan.
coldthinker: In my experience, German right-wingers have a very vague, idealised image of the US — since they’re the focal point of a lot of the neoliberal bullshit they subscribe to, they’re just *assumed* to be a role model. Without even checking what policies are actually being enacted there.
For example I’ve had conservatives hold up the US’s comparably rapid economic recovery after the banking crisis as an argument for austerity and market liberalisation, when they actually engaged in MASSIVE stimulus spending, and continue to practice protectionism through one-sided trade agreements! They completely block that out, and just *assume* that the US economy must have been saved by the Invisivble Hand to reward their ideological purity.
I’ve brought up things like the non-existent healthcare system and social safety net, high crime and murder rate, the incredibly expensive higher education, or the miserable infrastructure, and they didn’t even try to defend those things, in many cases — they were confused (or called me a liar), because they’d never heard of them.
What I’m trying to say is, those people totally like Reagan. But not necessarily because they approve (or even know) of anything he did in particular.
Reagan snoozed the afternoon away while a light colonel of marines ran a secret government out of the White-house basement.
If you want a good look at Reagan as California governor see if you can locate a copy of “The Last Days of the Late Great State of California”. I recall one quote from the book about a time that Governor Reagan got caught in an obvious lie. A staffer assured the press that (something like), “Governor Reagan has never lied to the people of California and what’s more he never will again.”
No Mo’Ron.
*remember*?
Hollywood went to his head, thinking Star Wars was doable, so he initiated a prototype, that DOD called SDI. Many engineers (*raises hand*) enjoyed the concept, more as concept (with salary) rather than a potential product to implement.
ugh
but didn’t Ronnie get the Ruskies to cave, dropping The Wall at his command?
ugh.
part of why the Ruthuglicans worship him as their absent prophet of Republican Monarchy Rising. (I suppose).
pfft
I’m sure ghostRonnie is tenting his fingers watching our current situation. “all according to plan (*lip smack*) “
One question that I wanted the moderators at the debate to ask was:
‘How does it feel to be whooping it up in the bar car of the Reagan train wreck?’
A beautifully expressed statement about R.R. I knew I would like it from the very 1st sentence. I am old enough to remember that environment, and the feel that I had that politics on the right had made a shift to something i had not seen before. That shift has never gone away since then, and all Americans have been robbed and made more stupid because of it.
“trickle down”
Jarred @21
In 1983 the mujaheddin President Reagan praised as freedom-fighters weren’t the Taliban-proper. But one of them was Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi.
According to Reed* and Rhodes** Gorbachev put superpower nuclear disarmament on the table at Rejkavik. Reagan refused to discuss it because he wanted to continue with “Star Wars” instead. Gorbachev’s proposal was to make “Star Wars” unnecessary by having the US and USSR both dismantle their nuclear stockpiles, except for a minimal “assured destruction” capability in ballistic missile submarines – effectively ending the threat of nuclear armageddon while keeping enough of a balance of terror that nuclear aggression was not practical.
In that context, there was one great statesman — and only one — at Rejkavik. The ignorant cowboy actor, who is widely credited for “winning the cold war” by right-wingers, perpetuated it and allowed its byproduct to continue to threaten human exctinction ever since.
(* At the Abyss, ** Twilight of the Bombs)
Marcus:
“The Emperor’s New Condiments”
“AIDS? No such thing. Nope.”
Marcus Ranum #29
Except Gorbachev was forced into that position after six years of Reagan’s diplomacy where he pushed disarmament with several Soviet leaders, including one Stalinist. Whatever Reagan was playing at in Reykjavík, that summit and the Soviet proposal only happened because of Reagan’s policy.
A policy which, amusingly enough, was based on lies, delusions and irresponsible spending, but was also the only thing that could allow diplomacy to break through. His drawbacks at home, including his worship of capitalism, were exactly the things that allowed him to end the Cold War and free ~250 million people. Including me. I remember those times.
Similarly, Bush Senior, father of Shrub, implemented policies that prevented hunger in the falling USSR and allowed Yeltsin to rise as a sort-of-kinda-almost democratic leader, whereas Clinton’s actions (or lack of thereof) eventually led to Putin’s rule.
This isn’t a coincidence. Having an intelligent thug in charge is disastrous at home, but is a boon when dealing with similar thugs abroad. An unintelligent thug is bad all around, though.
Don’t know what else to add to the conversation except this. I’m not a huge fan of Salon but this excerpt is spot on.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/
raygun and the end of the cold war.
From where I sit raygun was only following the lead of those who went before him he was no “outlier” on cold war policy, it was gorby who had the courage to really to do something different. One of the main causes of the “collapse ” pf the soviet system and the subsequent end of the cold war was the simple fact that they the Soviet empire had no credit and could not afford the military expenses and maintain the illusion of prosperity and personal security that that western financial system afforded.
The west could simply keep borrowing the money needed for guns and butter.
uncle frogy
unclefrogy #33
…the military expenses that suddenly skyrocketed due to Reagan’s “Star Wars” and the huge loses in Afghanistan due to Reagan’s support for the Mujaheddin. Not to mention that Reagan was one of the few people that knew that the Soviet empire can’t sustain itself. The intelligence officers at the time believed the inflated economic reports that various Soviet agencies and ministries were giving to each other.
USSR was certainly doomed, but so was Mao’s China. The fact that Russia had at least a small period of what could be called freedom is certainly an achievement of both sides.
Reagan had more meetings with Soviet leaders than anyone before him. He had a diplomatic agenda, supported by violence (Mujaheddin) and economic/militaristic threat (Star Wars), and he pursued his agenda tirelessly.
Gorby came to power only because the party leadership realized that it must do something different. And the party never did (does?) anything without being forced to.
how is that substantially different from what had been going on since the end of the war.
it was the issuing of debt in the form of bonds that allowed the deficit spending to continue until the present day. The arms race which you are referring to was “won” by the bankers and “capitalists” who held (hold) that debt and not by the population of the wining countries.
Funny thing is those who made the material often bought bonds with the profits earned from the arms race (takes money to make money).
I will grant you raygun did continue the arms race but so did every president and congress since the 1940’s and we have always had proxies fighting for us all over the f’n world nothing new in that either.
He did look believable giving those speeches on the TV but if you listen to them without seeing him they are about as believable as a Rush Limbaugh rant
are you saying that before raygun no one was trying to talk to the soviets much?
Or was it that Gorby was more willing to talk about doing something substantial because he recognized the difficulty they were in caused by the arms race and their lack of credit and he wanted to reform the top heavy system that had grown too corrupt?
uncle frogy
As a kid growing up in ’80s Ireland, a grey depressing place still being run as a Catholic quasi-theocracy and crippled with emigration and unemployment as a result of years of political misrule, Reagan was scary to me. I remember being genuinely freaked by the possibility of nuclear war at that time (probably thanks to media like this and this). In my mind, if it was ever going to kick off, it would be Ronnie who’d press the button. Even before I knew of his courting of the religious right and their obsession with the end of the world. Even– no, especially– when he came to Ireland and the politicians here fell over themselves to kiss his arse. Something about the guy just rang wrong.
My grandfather worked for a venue in Dublin where a lot of conventions and trade shows were held that my family and I would get to go to for free. Based on this, the Soviet Union was to me this strange, almost comical, place populated by pleasant people with a mild obsession with tractors. Maybe the Soviet leaders at that time were too grey, too transient compared to Reagan’s polished persona to register as characters capable of bringing about Armageddon, I don’t know.
TL;DR: Fuck Reagan
Let’s also remember the time that Raygun sold a bunch of weapons to Iran so that he could fund insurgencies in Central/South America. That was some really stellar leadership there.
https://youtu.be/u_gt-yg3DhQ enjoy
Cat Mara @ 37:
I was older than you at the time (and in the States), but I had the same conviction. Reagan scared the shit out of me.
Cat Mara @37
I didn’t worry about that at the time. Reagan was no autonomous robot. His handlers were in control and they didn’t want nuclear war any more than anyone else.
They just wanted to make money and Star Wars was a pipeline of cash for the guys who own the Pentagon.
microraptor #38
…and to release USAmerican hostages held in Iran. You forgot that little insignificant detail.
—
unclefrogy
The difference being the number of meetings, Reagan’s ability to ease personal tensions (his habit of telling Soviet jokes was a testament to his understanding of good diplomacy – not only to see how the other side sees things, but to understand how the other side sees itself), Afghanistan, which was the only major Soviet loss since WW2 and thus was a game-changer, the humongous increase in US military spending – the largest since WW2, spending that USSR couldn’t keep up with, and “Star Wars” which was perceived as a game-changer since it was supposed to nullify MAD entirely.
Or, in other words, the difference was in everything.
Correct, but irrelevant. I’m not saying that Reagan was a good president for you but that he was a good president for me.
Not nearly to the same extent. Reagan’s spending were the largest in US history since WW2 and up to the current depression. That was a significant change.
And you’ve always lost! Miserably! Cuba and Vietnam were utter failures, Korea was a draw and Chile was such an insignificant victory that it had become a joke.
Afghanistan was the first real challenge for the Red Army since WW2. Its failure there shuttered the cult of USSR’s military invincibility for its own citizen and made Russia war-wary up until 2008.
And it wouldn’t have happened if Reagan hadn’t supported the jihadists.
The important thing was that he was believable to Soviet leaders, even though our own experts kept telling them that he was full of shit.
Not nearly to that extent nor from that position of power.
this is a simple point which is not at all insignificant.
Without that credit there would have been no great military build up, no star wars research no accelerated arms race. The United States under the raygun administration engaged in deficit spending, they borrowed the money they had to because we did not have it and still don’t. The Soviets could not and did not have an export product/commodity of significant value to trade for what they needed. They do now how ever and it is we who are reaching the limits of our ability to sustain the deficit spending and debt incurred by military spending.
raygun sounded good and for a some people has a good reputation he had good press but he was just a hollow wind bag and left a mess in the national government and in the state of California that we still have not even come close to working out of yet
Looks like you forgot that Iran released those hostages on the day Reagan was inaugurated. Very likely according to a deal cooked up in Paris with some or Ronnie’s campaign folks some months before, in order to lay the full blame for the hostages on Carter.
Long before Ron and the boys discovered their “Freedom Fighters” in Central America, and a skeevy way to fund them.
K E Decilon #44
You’re thinking different hostages. There were two major hostage scandals. The first one was over in 1981, Iran-Contra was about the second group.
kevinalexander @ #41
Reagan’s administration was arguably more corrupt than any since before Teddy Rooseveldt.
“By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever.”
—- lorelynn @ Daili Daily Kos –>
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/157477/-List-of-Reagan-administration-convictions
I was worried about that at the time.
Alexander Z @ #45
Right you are. So I gather you are OK with St Ronnie swapping missiles for hostages, on the authority of a wingnut Light Colonel with an office in the basement? Proceeds to be used in a clandestine war in Central America, directed by the same wingnut?
Oh, that’s right, Ronnie didn’t know a thing about it. Sworn to by any number of the indicted, soon to be indicted, and/or convicted members of his staff, mentioned above.
Any idea how it would have worked out for Carter to try that?
K E Decilon #47
No.
Let me reiterate my position yet again: I applaud Reagan for ending the Cold War. Even if that is the only good thing he ever did (which is very likely) I still think it outweighs his other deeds, simply because on one hand of the scale you have the potential end of humanity as we know it in a nuclear holocaust, but also because of his enormous help to ~250 million people trapped under various forms of Soviet rule.
Or as I’ve said to unclefrogy: He was a good president to me – a person trapped behind the Iron Curtain, but a bad president to you.
I’ve never said anything even close to that. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Alexander Z @ #48
OK, I understand that.
However, I and many others think that you give Ronny Raygun way too much credit.
You seem to agree that the CCCP collapsed because they could not keep up with the escalating cost of the cold war. What I saw was that as they tried to keep up with the West, (Not just the US, BTW) they pissed away their entire economy on guns. There was no butter, and their economy was unsustainable.
Every US President since WWII added to the debt and spent it on the military. This was nothing new.
In my opinion, the Soviet Union would have collapsed soon if Donald Duck had been President. By spending our military into the stratosphere, he may have gained you 10 years, max. We are still paying for that, and for him moving the political atmosphere of the US to somewhere between Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet. All the millions freed from Soviet rule will be moving there along with the US.
Sorry you misunderstood. Those were my words, being snarky.
Thank you for listening.
It’s so fascinating to see reason and evidence and nuance go completely out the window when the topic turns to politics. I’m no Reagan fan, but this list, when it’s not incomprehensible, is just flat out wrong:
The New Deal? Alive and well. Carter actually began the process of deregulation that Reagan continued. The air traffic controllers deserved to be fired. Globalization took a chunk out of America’s manufacturing base, that was going to happen with or without Reagan. Amazing that America still has any wealth left if the 1% supposedly embezzled it all in the 80s. He does deserve blame for the War on Drugs, but subsequent administrations should be blamed EVEN MORE because they continue that war even when it’s quite evidently a failure. Acid rain? Reagan is responsible for acid rain? Ludicrous. (http://www3.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html – half of the pollutant decline took place between 1980-1995). And finally it is just slanderous to suggest that Reagan is responsible for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon.
I understand it makes us feel good to relive the foibles of past Republican presidents, but we’re just as bad as creationists when we do so without evidence, and only because we don’t agree with their politics (which boils down to value judgements, in the end). Clinton (the sexual predator, lest we forget) wasn’t much farther to the left of Reagan on many issues yet I rarely see his failures recounted with anything close to the same level of vitriol.
Reagan’s idiotic “Evil Empire” rhetoric very nearly caused that nuclear holocaust on at least two occasions, by convincing the Soviet gerontocrats that a first strike was a real possibility – google “Able Archer” and “Stanislav Petrov” for details. It’s completely unclear that the USSR could have survived the Afghan War even without Reagan’s support for the mujaheddin: the army was by that time already a disaster area, and the Mujaheddin had safe havens in Pakistan and broad popular support once the invasion occurred. And how many of those ~250 millions, and their descendants, have any real political freedom now? In effectively all of the republics except the Baltic states, the outcome of the USSR’s collapse was the inheritance of power by sections of the existing corrupt elites (it’s no coincidence at all that Putin comes from the KGB), the sell-off of public property at ludicrous prices, severe damage to the health and education systems, and a huge rise in death rates. None of this was a necessary consequence of ending the Communist Party’s dictatorship. Those who benefitted most were the citizens of the Baltic Republics and the east European satellite states – in large part because they were allowed to join the EU. We in the west suffered – although obviously still comparatively well-off – because the existence of the USSR kept our own elites in check: they had to restrain their greed because they needed to show that capitalism could provide a degree of prosperity for everyone. Now, they don’t.
Penny L@50,
There’s something in what you say about Carter and Clinton, but as far as wealth is concerned, I suggest you look at the huge rise in household debt since 1980. The huge debts accrued by ordinary households are the inverse of the vast increase in the wealth of the 1% – and even among the 1%, it’s the top 1% of that 1% who have gained most proportionately.
Shorter me @51,
The outcome of the collapse of the USSR is that both Russia and the USA, have become corrupt oligarchies with an increasingly flimsy democratic facade. Most of Europe is well on the way to the same position.
Nick Gotts #51-52
a. “Able Archer” was a response to USSR shooting down a Korean civilian airplane that was carrying a US congressman, and considering that Andropov was a hard-line Stalinist that was arguing for a nuclear strike on USA since Khrushchev’s days I doubt he needed any rhetoric to fuel his bloodlust. If anything, a strong show of force was needed to prevent a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis style Soviet advancement.
b. By the same token you could say that it was Clinton’s rhetoric that nearly caused the end of the world in 1995 during the Norwegian Rocket Incident. It wasn’t – Russian paranoia was enough.
Popular support can’t penetrate T72 armor. Stingers can.
Well, let’s see (2014 figures):
a. Roughly 122.5 millions (citizens of former Warsaw Block countries, former Yugoslavia and former East Germany) are EU members and are enjoying either full democracy or a semi-democratic government.
b. Roughly another 65 millions (non-EU eastern Europe citizens) live under near-democratic or non-totalitarian regimes.
c. Most of Russia’s 144 million citizens still, even now at the height of Putin’s paranoia, have more liberty today than they ever did (the exception are Russian Caucuses republics, but they are sparsely populated and are countered by greater freedom in non-Russian Caucuses countries).
I would say that only Turkmenistan has it worse now than before. Everybody else are either in significantly better position or live under a Soviet-type regime (for example Belarus and Transnistria). Next.
Do you honestly compare today’s corporate greed to a regime where the secret police would trash our apartment weekly and torture my grandfather by crushing his knuckles so that even years later he couldn’t close his hand?
This kind of reasoning makes me very angry, so I’ll try to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you have a childishly dichotomous black-and-white view of reality.