Cypress (01-16-2020)
Cypress (01-16-2020)
evince (01-16-2020)
Re the video of Ronald Reagan telling Russian joke (posted by Cowboy)...THAT was funny ! Let's hear it for "The Gipper" - a great guy !
Dachshund
Reagan knew enough about the USSR to fully appreciate that it was as he famously said, an "evil empire", that it had to to stopped from exporting its vile expansionist, Marxist ideology around the world. He was good to his word, backing the Contras to roll the socialist Sandinista insurgency in Nicaragua, kicking Ruskie butt in Afghanistan (YAAAAAAY) and so on. In short winning the Cold War for the West when the Soviet economy went belly up trying to match its military spending with the US; and then suddenly the Berlin Wall came down on the 4th , December, 1989 - what a magical, wonderful night that was (YAAAAAAY). It was all over for those wicked Red communist cunts. I travelled to Berlin in 1990 and bought a great chunk of the Berlin wall that knocked out with a hammer. On one side (the West Berlin side) it is covered with bright, multicoloured spray pain that was part of a graffitoe, but the opposite side (East Berlin) is just grey concrete - and that says it all. Freedom vs tyranny and oppression.
You wont find a single, mainstream, scholarly historian who denies that Ronald Reagan played an important role in the fall of the Soviet Union. ( And, by the way Reagan DID possess an intense loathing of communism, just like Richard Nixon in the earlier early years of his political career - another great American President).
Finally, you use the term Democratic socialism in a rather cavalier, "feel-good" manner, as though it were all about democratic freedoms, equal rights, political justice for all, and so on. Let me set you straight, Democratic socialism is a political ideology whose ultimate goal is the elimination of the capitalist economic system (in say the US) and its replacement with socialism; by which I mean the replacing private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere. democratic socialism's modus operandi is to effect this transition GRADUALLY, through stealthy, incremental reforms. But the ULTIMATE goal of Democratic socialism is to establish a socialist state. And there has never yet been a successful socialist state. Socialism inevitably depends on dictatorships to attain and remain in power. Without exception every socialist leader from Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Stalin to Mao Zedong to basic political freedoms, such as: a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to freedom of speech, free and fair elections, freedom of assembly and so on Fidel Castro has promised to initiate. But none of this ever happened, what happened is that 120,000,000 corpses washed up on the beach - shocking testimony to a warped and evil ideology called socialism, the "brain"-child of history's most incompetent and deluded political philosopher and economist Karl Marx. EVERY SINGLE prediction Marx made turned out to be DEAD WRONG.
When you see devious cunts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex and Bernie Sanders labelling themselves Democratic Socialist (and the 100 current Democrat members of the so-called Congressional Progressive Caucus) in the House are essentially pushing the same kind of extreme left policies as AOC and Sanders) don't be deceived, they are SOCIALISTS who are intent on ultimately destroying American capitalism.
Finally, the Scandinavian states like Sweden are no longer the social utopias they claimed to be. They were able to experiment with socialist government due the the fact that during earlier decades, the 1950's, for example, they had very successful capitalist economies. Sweden, say, had a lot of cash to play silly-buggers with an expensive new socialist system. It basically went broke of course - like all socialist states do, and when they had squandered their fathers and grandfathers money on Welfare expenditure, etc; they had to rely on private industry (capitalism) bailing them out, which is what is going on right now. So don'y give me any BS about idyllic, egalitarian, socialist nations like Denmark and Sweden in Scandinavia - they are now capitalist states.
Dachshund
Dachshund
Last edited by Dachshynddawg; 01-17-2020 at 11:20 AM.
I love how Americans like to give themselves disproportionate credit and glory for ending the USSR.
I am sure American professors at the University of Chicago go to great efforts to enshrine Reagan for being the dragon slayer of the USSR.
I have personally not met anybody in Russia -people who actually lived with totalitarian communism - cite Reagan as a core reason for ending the USSR.
The USSR was ended by Russians and other ethnic citizens. It was ended by nationalism, by the inexorable tide of internal forces and regional history, and by the resistance and vision of ordinary Russians, citizens, dissidents, authors, writers, poets, and unconventional political and social leaders
BULLSHIT. It ended because its economy collapsed - the Soviet Union ran out of cash - (par for the course in any socialist state) - and Reagan played and important part in precipitating this. FULL STOP.Reagan massively invested in defence during his administration, then he redoubled the US military offensive against Soviet expansionism around the world - keeping the heat right on the bastards wherever they surfaced.
The "resistance and vision of ordinary Russians, dissents, authors, poets", really ? I think all that tended to achieve for such individuals was either bullet in the neck or 25 years in a Siberian prison.
Finally, I don't really care what any Postmodern/neo-Marxist academics in Chicago might have to say about Reagan, the whole city has been a revolting hot-bed of socialist political activism for decades. Its where Obama studied Alinsky theory and got the support of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to help win his first election as a Democrat politician.
Dachshund
Last edited by Dachshynddawg; 01-17-2020 at 11:19 AM.
Ronald Reagan was a doddering old fool whose overriding interest was preserving American economic hegemony.
He literally did not genuinely give a rat's ass about the freedom, dignity, and human rights of Russian people. His rhetoric about freedom and democracy was the thin veil that covered the actual motive: preservation of American economic hegemony .
The only president to make human rights and human dignity an element of our foreign policy was Jimmy Carter. He was the only U.S. president, through deed and action, to show genuine concern for the human rights and freedom of Russian people and other Soviet citizens .
The cottage industry that supports Saint Reagan is built on myth and a substantial pile of horse shit.
Gorbachev told Reagan he was going to take down the wall
Then Reagan went to the wall and said "Gorbachev takedown this wall"
and then claimed credit for it coming down
Cypress (01-17-2020)
When did the Berlin Wall Fall?
On November 9, 1989, the Cold War officially began to thaw when Günter Schabowski, the head of East Germany’s Communist Party, announced that citizens could now cross into West Germany freely. That night, thousands of East and West Germans headed to the Berlin Wall to celebrate, many armed with hammers, chisels and other tools. Over the next few weeks, the wall would be nearly completely dismantled. After talks over the next year, East and West Germany officially reunited on October 3, 1990.
This was a result of many changes over the course of two years. Gorbachev’s reforms within the Soviet Union gave Eastern Bloc nations more freedom to determine their own government and access to the West. Protests within East Germany gained strength, and after Hungary and Czechoslovakia opened their borders, East Germans began defecting en masse.
No one watched Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech.
Despite its later fame, Reagan’s speech received relatively little media coverage, and few accolades, at the time. Western pundits viewed it as misguided idealism on Reagan’s part, while the Soviet news agency Tass called it “openly provocative” and “war-mongering.” And Gorbachev himself told an American audience years later: “[W]e really were not impressed. We knew that Mr. Reagan’s original profession was actor.”
Gorbachev won election by telling the people that he wanted to bring the nation into the world fold folks
then the republicans helped the assholes in Russia trash him for his efforts
Giving the world the drunkard Yeltson who then elevated PUTIN as his sucessor
Russians are a hearty and resilient people who have successfully resisted attempts by Mongol hordes, Swedish Empires, Napoleonic armies, and homicidal Nazi legions to subjugate and annihilate Russians
They were highly unlikely to be awed by Saint Reagan's empty rhetoric, feel intimidated or feel they had to unfurl the white flag of surrender because the United States increased its defense budget by 5 percent annualized.
The fall of the USSR was engineered and fueled internally by dissatisfied citizens of the USSR, by historic nationalism, and by the tides of internal forces and tensions which had nothing to do with the doddering old fool Saint Reagan
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