How Much Better Would Life Be If...?

[RockHardCore]

The Soviets had "won" the "Cold War"? I was just thinking about this b/c it seems like all of Bu$h's war is driven by this capitalistic mindset of "GIVE ME MORE!! I WANT MORE!! IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!"

But you know that everyone became convinced that Reagan "won" the "Cold War". So all of the sudden everyone thinks we need more conservatives all of the place because Reagan "bested" the Soviets.

One reason I am thinking about this question is b/c you can look at Cuba and see their literacy rates and universal health care and total lack of polution. You know Castro has been their leader for a long time, and sure there are some things missing in Cuba, but what would be the price of acquiring them? Honestly!

So what would be better/different if Gorbachev had won?

[Subdivisions]

1. Ummm...

Gorbachev was a cooperative Soviet leader who was Reagan's peace partner. So, he did win.

[Salviati]

2. life in the soviet union wasn't exactly a party either.

And you want to talk about lack of pollution? I don't suggest looking at the former Soviet Union. In a battle between hypercapitalism and totalitarian communism, the choices are really between bad and worse.

[eallen]

3. Reagan didn't win. The USSR's socialism imploded.

[RockHardCore]

5. Yeah, but...

What should/could we have learned from the Soviets that would make life better now? I feel like there must be a lot! The Russians aren't in any wars right now!

[eallen]

8. What?! There's a Russian-Chechnyan peace treaty, and no news on it?

[Karenca]

4. Most of the Internet is banned in Cuba..................eom

[eallen]

10. "Well, see, that's only because of the US embargo."

Or so we'll be told.

:eyes:

[ryanus]

6. I thought about this the other day

A fighter jet flew over the other day and the person I was with said something about how the air force doesn't have any air-to-air enemy anymore. I thought that in a larger sense, perhaps one reason that there are so many people wanting to engage in actual combat in the so-called war on terror is because they want something to go against, maybe even something to challenge them. Maybe they think it's no fun or unrewarding if there is no bully to fight. Like the Klingon mentality.

So maybe if the Soviet Union was still around, we wouldn't be messing around so much in the middle east? I don't know if overall it would be better if it were still around, though.

[MercutioATC]

7. This is a serious question?

The issue is much more complicated than you present, but widespread socialism "Soviet style" would be horrific.

Both current "neocon capitalism" and 1980's "Soviet socialism" are/were incredibly poor implementations of their stated ideals. You don't want either one.

[RockHardCore]

9. I guess I am thinking of socialism, properly understood...

I felt like Gorby was really on that path.

[MercutioATC]

11. I hear ya, but Gorby wasn't on that path...

Pure socialism, as a theory, is damn near perfect. Once you realize that you're attempting a "perfect" system with humans, however, it becomes much less attractive.

That said, Gorby didn't have a more stable, purer, version of socialism than anybody else. Add to that the lure of western capitalism, and an enduring Soviet socialist state was inevitably doomed.

Economic idealism is a good thing, but keep in mind that you're attempting to apply an "ideal" system to a flawed populace. It'll never work on a large scale (ultimately, neither does pure capitalism...or pure anything , but that's another discussion).

[enigma000]

12. I remember watching the movie Red Dawn in the 1980s

I always enjoyed watching the Red Army kicking American ass. Stupid Americans being locked away in camps, forced off the lands they stole. For a while, I hoped that would happen in real life, but it was not to be. The democratic nations of Eastern Europe were overthrown in fascist coup-d'etats, and the USSR collapsed.

Maybe if a wiser American President had thought of the future and not of his re-election things might have gone differently.

[ieoeja]

15. You know somewhere, someone...

... is quoting this post pretending that it was serious so s/he can say, "look what Democrats are saying".

[baldguy]

13. The Soviet idea of a Socialist Utopia is a myth.

Just like the neocon idea of a Capitalist Utopia.

[ieoeja]

14. Reagan EXTENDED the Cold War

Gorbachev, the last Soviet ambassador to the United States, and a number of other former Soviet officials have stated repeatedly that Reagan's saber rattling breathed life back into the Soviet hard-liners. Gorbachev held the exact same position under Breshnev (sp?) that Stalin, Kruschev and Breshnev (sp?) held under each of their predecessors. But unlike those three before him, Gorbachev was passed over for premier TWICE precisely because of Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, both men promoted over him died in short time clearing the way for Gorbachev's introduction of Glasnost.

You know the worst thing about giving Reagan's militarism credit for breaking the Soviet Union? That would mean Capitalism did not inherently defeat Communism. Communism says society does better when the state/commune/whatever runs most things. Capitalism says society does better when the state runs least.

But when Reaganites claim that Reagan defeated the Soviet Union, they are claiming that the world's first and most powerful Communist regime was defeated, not by capitalism, free-enterprise and the power of the individual, but by the largest of big government programs in human history: the United States Department of Defense.

Remember the media's response to Pizza Hut opening up on Red Square? Every evening broadcast opened with lines like, "Communism is dead" and "Lenin is turning over in his glass coffin". Sure, this happened during the Reagan administration. But do you know what was the administration's involvement in what PepsiCo did? They tried to STOP it.

Yes, they tried to STOP the spread of capitalism to the Soviet Union. That is not how they saw it, of course. Churchill with his Iron Curtain and US Presidents from Truman through LBJ thought we should metaphorically "starve" the Soviet Union into capitulation. Nixon, Ford and Carter thought we should "compete" against them. Reagan tried putting the Detente genie back in the bottle, but was never able to do so. In the Red Square Pizza Hut case, the courts ruled against the Reagan administration, paving the way for the official introduction of capitalism into the old Soviet Union presaging its fall.

Modern day conservatives have rejected their own ideology in their rush to canonize St Reagan and demonize liberalism (free enterprise being a liberal enterprise after all). Of course, many conservatives never understood their ideology anyway. The "flag" is all they know even when they don't know to what they are supposedly pledging allegiance. Look no further than their rejection of 8/10ths of the Bill of Rights.