Don't you just miss the "Cold War". Two sides. Them and Us. All ethnics were required to "cool it" because their personal wars were not in the best interests to the Cold Warrior Nations. Mutually Assured Destruction did work. Do you think it will continue to work with the ethnics holding a bomb ? Inspired from the Azerbaijan / Armenia thread. Moi r > g View attachment 28967 Cold War freeloader on "US"
The Cold War was a mutual dream of the US and Soviet Union. It kept defense contractors, consultants, and the military busy and well funded for decades. Those were the best days for the Rand Corp. and many others. Looking back, it was a conflict of choice. Both sides needed a global enemy to justify their "defense," i.e., empire building. The fall-out is that the US is now embracing the old Soviet model, while Russia is embracing the old American model. So both sides "won" in the end. I feel sad to see the US go Soviet because it never worked there, so it won't work here either. I suppose some lessons can only be learned through pain.
OMG As much as I hate to agree with corporationist bobov bobov got it correct here. The West is corralling markets ala Sovietsky Bloc nations' markets while Russia / Putin expands its' markets in a competitive fashion without the commitment to accept so much loans/aid as American made sugar fortified food products or don't trade with them treaties. Gotta run, can't preview Moi r > g bobov doesn't get r > g or serves "them". No
America uses the best of all systems, the problem is some one to restrict America to only one system which will put unnecessary restrictions on us .
It was also great for THE WORKER, the USA had to care more about the worker, support unions, keep wages high, support benefits and time off, unemployment low, as long as communism and the USSR "seemed" like a somewhat succesful alternative. Think about it, the best days for the working class where also the times that the Soviet Union seemed the strongest. As soon as communism collapsed what happened? All out war on the middle class lead by the Republicans began.
Why should I miss the 'us against them' cold war? We got a really good 'us against them' cold civil war going on right now.
You're right about dates, but I see no reason to suppose the Cold War helped workers. You're only looking at a coincidence. What you say about a Republican war on the middle class is ridiculous. Over time, the two parties have repositioned themselves. When I was young, Democrats championed racism and segregation (Southern Democrats were the bulwark of Jim Crow) as well as workers. Now, Republicans are the champions of middle class values, which the left holds in contempt. Democrats have become the party of the upper middle class (which sees taxes as a form of charity) and those who profit from the government (contractors, consultants, government employees) as well as those patronized by the government (aid recipients). Workers - those who earn their living by working to produce goods and services - are now overwhelmingly Republican. It's a near comical reversal of the facts to accuse Republicans of a war on the middle class. Most Republicans are middle class. (No, not the rich, which is obvious because there are too few rich people to make a party.) Democrats are raised to sneer at the "bourgeoisie" - the middle class - and its values. You've a right to be a leftist, but you have no right to invert the facts for partisan gain.
At least the Cold War tended to unite Americans against a common enemy. The current fratricide, with a large minority trying to change the US into a "dictatorship of the proletariat" after the fashion of the Soviet Union, is only destructive. Even if democracy and the Constitution eventually prevail, the country will still be scarred. The best analogy is to the Civil War, which opened wounds taking almost a century to heal. Even in the Civil War, the combatants were honest about their beliefs. Now, lies have become the norm, at least by the left (see the post by NothingSacred).
