John D. Giorgis wrote:
>At 10:53 AM 5/25/01 +1200 K.Feete wrote:
>>Er, Reagan planned something? I always regarded him as sort of the Tin
>>Man of Presidents... "If I only had a brain...."
>
>If my understanding is right, you're a college junior. That means you
>should be @20 years old. So, in Reagan's last year in office, you would
>be somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 or 8 years old. So, care to tell me
>what you are basing these gratuitous insults on?
Easy: my parents' viewpoints. That and my history lessons. Oh, and Robin
Williams skits. He does this really good one about Star Wars with Obi Ron
Kanobi....
>I highly recommend that you at least leaf through a copy of "Reagan in His
>Own Hand" before you ever make another comment about his intelligence.
Why don't I just watch his movies? You know, the B-grade flicks?
>Wasn't it just yesterday that you launched into a tirade about how
>concerned you were about justice in the world?
Either that, or the day before. I'm on the bottom of the world so time
gets a little confused.
>
>Perhaps you've heard of the atrocities committed in places like Ukraine,
>Prague, Tibet, East Turkistan (Xinjiang), Ethiopia, Hungary, Gdansk, and
>Cambodia. Perhaps you also recognize that everyone of those atrocities
>has been committed by communist regimes.
I don't, but I'll take your word for it.
Incidentally, there's a few problems with this. For one thing, unless I
miss my guess, most of these places were already experiencing atrocities
*before* they became communist countries. Russia was a mess- the monarchy
was an atrocity; China the same (read some accounts of the old Empire
there sometime- it makes Mao look positively sweet); Ethiopia was a
colony, and one good, hard look at colonialism will tell you that even
communism was preferable. At least then, as one postcolonial author wrote
(DAMN my bookshelves for being at home), the countries were making their
own mistakes and not having the French or the Germans or the Brits around
to commit atrocities for them. Cambodia and Vietnam I *know* were French
colonies, and the French were some of the worst, most oppressive,
bloodbathian, pay-back-every-white-death-with-a-hundred-black ones
colonialists in existance.
America didn't *give* a fuck. Sorry for the language, but it's true.
America was approached by the Vietnamese after one of the world wars and
*begged* to help them free themselves from the French regime and set up a
real democracy and America said no. They didn't care about the colonies.
It was only when these colonies turned, in desparation, to the Soviet
Union that America suddenly woke up and said Hey! No! We have to Stand Up
for the Rights of these people! They deserve their Freedom! They're not
doing what we want them to!
But the main point here is that most of your examples were already
unstable. I seriously doubt communism made them any more unstable.
Eastern Europe is probably the only exception, and even it was a mess
after the first world war and the fall of the age-old empires that that
entailed.
>
>Did you really want those people controlling large chunks of the world?
>Do you really doubt that the communists would have taken over much of the
>world had the United States not made efforts to resist them at every turn?
Er, yes. Do try and remember, for a moment, when I grew up. By the
eighties communism was a joke. I was eleven when the Berlin Wall went
down. My family celebrated, but I don't recall anyone being real
surprised. By then it was seen- by the people I knew and loved at least-
as only a matter of time.
Even in my parent's generation the Fight Against Communism meant people
they knew or actors they identified with being blacklisted, McCarthied,
or drafted into the Vietnam War. They grew up with a bitterness against
the government that never faded, and has not faded, so far as I can see,
in the American people as a whole.
Was communism worth *that* cost? It's a bit of a theoretical question now
whether or not communism would have collapsed on its own or how much
damage it did. I don't know the answer. But if you think the cost was
only in money and time and lives- you're dreaming.
Kat Feete
--------------------------------
Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why.
It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or
the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to
show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly
worth living.
- Terry Pratchett
