The Politics of the 80s: It Was Tense and Divisive Just Like Today

[ToastnBacon]

I never said Reagan isn't admired by many Eastern Europeans, but each country that threw off the yoke of Soviet domination has their leaders and heroes (Lech Wallensa, etc). I've yet to meet a non-American who viewed it as Mr. Reagan winning that "war" for them.  Rather the USA (entire nation) was a valuable source of hope (like John Paul II was in those years), and part of Reagan's genius was NOT sending troops into each and every hotspot half-cocked. He was well attuned to the fact Americans were still healing the wounds of Vietnam and thus (for lack of a better phrase) cut and run when he deemed it a possible quagmire (Beirut after 250 servicemen killed in a terrorist attack) but took on the easy, winnable symbolic victories (Grenada!) to help bring back that pre-Vietnam 1950s "before things got complicated" patriotism he epitomized as a figure (being from that era himself). Sadly, the racial dog whistles and Southern Strategy played into that desire too.

The reason we invaded Grenada was because the Cubans were there building an airbase with a runway long enough to accommodate long-range Soviet bombers.

Call it symbolic if you wish, but there was a solid reason behind it. Letting the Soviets and Cubans go unchecked in the Western Hemisphere wouldn't have been very smart in 1983.

[Cara]

It didn't leave the U.S. in great fiscal condition either.

But we're still here .....

For all of our faults we have a county people risk their lives everyday trying to get into not trying to get out of...

Edited April 27, 2015 by Cara

[scrb]

No thanks to Reagan or others who keep boosting military budgets.

Oh and Libyans literally drowned this week trying to reach Italy and the EU.

It's not about ideals or vague notions of freedom when you're starving or trying to escape tribal wars. It's about finding any refuge in a storm.

[Bannon]

No thanks to Reagan or others who keep boosting military budgets.

Oh and Libyans literally drowned this week trying to reach Italy and the EU.

It's not about ideals or vague notions of freedom when you're starving or trying to escape tribal wars. It's about finding any refuge in a storm.

Tribal wars had nothing to do with Germans being shot dead by soldiers for the crime of trying to leave East Berlin, while Germans in West Berlin could leave if they liked, but with exceptionally rare exceptions, never did. Tribal wars had nothing to do with the fact that when the guards at the wall were no longer willing to shoot people dead, a few years after the events now being portrayed in this show take place, the people in the east left in droves.

 

Look, this isn't debatable, by any rational person with the ability to observe reality. The system of governance that Elizabeth and Phillip are working to advance was very, very, substantially worse, in terms of the legitimate use of violence, and in terms of creating conditions that made people's lives better, compared to the system of governance that Elizabeth and Phillip are working against. 

Edited April 28, 2015 by Bannon

[scrb]

Never claimed otherwise about conditions in the Eastern Bloc.

I was commenting on the statement about how people risked their lives to come to the U.S., which is undoubtedly true.

But you see refugees trying to get into all kinds of countries and in many cases, the country they're fleeing into is just better than the country they're fleeing from, more often economically than politically.

[viajero]

For every Eastern European killed, disappeared or tortured for political reasons during the 80's, there were at least 2 Latin Americans who suffered the same fate thanks to the US's hardline stand against democracy in the region,  Oh, Reagan said it was to avoid the spread of Communism, but funny how so many of the affected countries either never had an armed communist insurgency or only developed one after US supported dictators took over and squashed the pro-democracy middle.

 

For me, one of the moments that best symbolizes US foreign policy during that period took place when Jean Kirkpatrick (Reagan's Ambassador to the UN) took a quick tour to Costa Rica and Chile towards the end of his first term.  Upon arrival in Santiago, she promptly congratulated Pinochet for being a true friend of freedom and democracy, before launching into a blistering attack on the Costa Ricans, not coincidentally the one remaining truly democratic government in the region at the time, because of their insistence on maintaining that country's long-time policy of neutrality.  To many moderate pro-democracy Latin Americans this was as bad as if one of FDR's top diplomats had visited Nazi Germany in 1938 and made a speech in front of Hitler denouncing the Swiss for their refusal to openly back the fascist Falangists in the Spanish Civil War.

 

There is a reason why only the far extreme right wing in most of Latin America has any regard at all for Reagan.

[SlackerInc]

Nice post, viajero.

 

The reason we invaded Grenada was because the Cubans were there building an airbase with a runway long enough to accommodate long-range Soviet bombers.

Call it symbolic if you wish, but there was a solid reason behind it. Letting the Soviets and Cubans go unchecked in the Western Hemisphere wouldn't have been very smart in 1983.

 

Right, because there was nowhere Cuba could have fit such an airstrip despite having over 300 times the land mass of Grenada.

 

The Grenada invasion was condemned even by Canada and the UK, an overwhelming resolution of the U.N. General Assembly, and would have been in the Security Council as well had the U.S. not vetoed it.

 

It's pretty obvious that the reasons for that invasion were not strategic--at least not in the geopolitical sense.  Reagan was smarting from the 245 Marines killed in Beirut, and more generally wanted to get over "Vietnam syndrome" and roll over an easy target.  A great indicator of how absolutely absurd the whole sordid spectacle was, is the fact that "Operation Urgent Fury" (snort) involved about 7,000 GIs, yet the Army gave out nearly 9,000 medals for it!  Pffffft.

Edited April 29, 2015 by SlackerInc

[Bannon]

For every Eastern European killed, disappeared or tortured for political reasons during the 80's, there were at least 2 Latin Americans who suffered the same fate thanks to the US's hardline stand against democracy in the region,  Oh, Reagan said it was to avoid the spread of Communism, but funny how so many of the affected countries either never had an armed communist insurgency or only developed one after US supported dictators took over and squashed the pro-democracy middle.

 

For me, one of the moments that best symbolizes US foreign policy during that period took place when Jean Kirkpatrick (Reagan's Ambassador to the UN) took a quick tour to Costa Rica and Chile towards the end of his first term.  Upon arrival in Santiago, she promptly congratulated Pinochet for being a true friend of freedom and democracy, before launching into a blistering attack on the Costa Ricans, not coincidentally the one remaining truly democratic government in the region at the time, because of their insistence on maintaining that country's long-time policy of neutrality.  To many moderate pro-democracy Latin Americans this was as bad as if one of FDR's top diplomats had visited Nazi Germany in 1938 and made a speech in front of Hitler denouncing the Swiss for their refusal to openly back the fascist Falangists in the Spanish Civil War.

 

There is a reason why only the far extreme right wing in most of Latin America has any regard at all for Reagan.

Pinochet was a thug who murdered about 3200 people in order to maintain power, and eventually allowed himself to be removed from power, via elections, after 17 years. Castro murdered at least 3600 via firing squad in his first 17 years of despotic rule, and some 60,000 to 80,000 Cubans have died because Castro made it a crime to try to leave Cuba, and no, they didn't all drown trying to make the crossing in rickety boats. The were sometimes machine gunned in their rafts, and even dragged from the doorstep of foreign embassies in Havana, and then clubbed to death. The regime has now been in place for about 55 years, without ever allowing a real election involving competing political entities. That was the regime that was trying to aid communists in Grenada and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and Africa.

 

When Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981, communist regimes in the previous 6 decades had murdered nearly 100 million innocent people in the effort to maintain power, and had really never allowed competing political entities to try to remove a communist regime via a fair election. 100 million murdered with zero real elections. That was the context. The communists in Nicaragua did not allow a real election until the support of the Soviet regime had pretty much ended. Some argue that the Sandinistas allowed an election in 1984, but this....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_general_election,_1984

 

....gives a pretty balanced overview as to why this is a dubious proposition. One does not have to idolize Ronald Reagan to recognize the context of titanic communist mass murder and totalitarian control on 5 continents, all supported by the first communist regime, equipped with nuclear weapons from the 1950s on, that was in place in January 1981. Yes, Soviet capabilities were overrated, but when the corpses are stacked to the horizon, vision can be obscured. It is telling that once the Soviet regime was no longer willing and able to forment such totalitarian mass murder and despotism, the world became, at least for a while, a rather more peaceful place, with free and fair elections rather more frequent.  

Edited April 29, 2015 by Bannon

[viajero]

I would never dispute the evils of Communism or the major human toll that it took in the areas where the Communists were in power (including Cuba).  I've personally worked in Eastern Europe and heard plenty of horrifying personal accounts of the way things were behind the Iron Curtain.  But this does not lessen the negative impact that the Kissinger and Kirkpatrick doctrines had on Latin America (and yes, old Jean even had a doctrine named after her).

 

I do dispute whether the policy of creating the Contra war (and it was a Washington creation) can be considered to have had a net positive result even from the American point of view.  The Sandinistas were no saints and certainly no democrats (with a small d), but unlike other leftist insurgencies in the region, they also had never been all that close to Cuba or the USSR. Most of the military support they received during the revolution came from the few remaining centrist Latin American democracies like Mexico and Venezuela, with economic and logistical support from Costa Rica. 

 

Perhaps because of this, the revolution was not immediately followed by the massacre of political opponents, any moves against religion, or an attempt to eliminate property rights (with the exception of properties belonging to Somoza's cronies or involved in the Agrarian Reform program).  When the country was flooded by foreign aid workers to help with reconstruction right after the revolution, they promptly sent all the Cubans to remote areas on the Caribbean side of the country to get them out of the way (which backfired in a major way when the behavior of the Cuban "volunteers", including the raping of indigenous women and attempts to close churches, turned the Miskitos against the revolution).  Ortega initially opposed even inviting Castro to speak at the first anniversary of the revolution, before finally giving in as a sop to the hardliners in his coalition like Tomas Borge.  This actually initially backfired on the hardliners when Castro promptly gave his "Nicaragua is not an island" speech, encouraging Nicaragua to maintain good relations with its neighbors so as not to become isolated and dependent on aid from “the other side of the world”. Relations between the Sandinistas and Cuba only became close after Reagan launched the Contra War and backed Ortega into a corner.

 

But as I noted above, the real problem was the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, which basically stated that any Latin Americans who were not 100% in line with US policy were to be treated as enemies (i.e. "you are either for us or against us").  That and the fear that the Sandinistas would spark an uprising by the FMLN in El Salvador (the return of the Domino Theory).

 

And what was the end result?

 

• The Sandinistas only finally called for free elections once the cold war was basically over and they had no remaining external support for not doing so (just like Pinochet in Chile)

 

• The FMLN rebelled anyway, extending the war into El Salvador, with the consequent death of tens of thousands of civilians. 

 

• The resulting complete destabilization of northern Central America that has lasted until the present, with non-functional governments, out of control crime and gun violence, and large numbers of fleeing immigrants still trying to sneak into the US through Mexico.

 

• The FSLN and FMLN eventually ended up in power anyway, after being voted into office following the complete failure of the right wing parties in those countries to reduce poverty or control gang violence (not surprising if you consider that the US trained their police forces to repress political dissidents, not to fight crime).

 

More importantly, there has been a significant loss of American influence throughout the hemisphere.  So discredited and disliked was Reagan’s policy toward the region that not even the center and center-right civilian governments down in South America could afford to be seen as being too close to Washington (with the eventual singular exception of Colombia for its own internal reasons).  Clinton began to change this dynamic a bit, but all for naught due to the heavy handiness with which W tried to force Latin American governments to support the invasion of Iraq (nowhere more so than in Chile, a natural ally of the US because of its pro free markets and free trade policies, but who had the misfortune of being on the UN Security Council at the time and did not take well to being threatened with trade reprisals unless they voted in favor of the war).  Of course the fact that Obama has basically ignored the region hasn’t helped either.

 

Finally, getting back to Kirkpatrick’s speech in Santiago.  There is some irony in that it proved to be a turning point in catapulting the bookish and uncharismatic Oscar Arias to a landslide victory in the 1986 Costa Rican election, after he refocused his campaign on a “Peace and Neutrality” platform. While Reagan's policies had been successful at turning most Costa Ricans against the Sandinistas by then, this was more than offset by their anger at his continue insistence that they reverse the abolition of their armed forces. What it came down to is that Reagan just plain scared the shit out of Costa Ricans more than Ortega did. On taking office, Arias immediately closed down the "clandestine" airfields the CIA and drug cartels had opened in the north of the country as transshipment points for cocaine coming up from South America in exchange for weapons coming down for the Contras (often on the same planes).  This effectively ended the southern front of the Contra war. He then went on to launch his successful Central America peace process.

[SlackerInc]

The Sandinistas were no saints and certainly no democrats (with a small d)

 

Whatever the caveats, I still think they deserve credit for stepping down from power when they lost at the ballot box, spending years in the minority, and then coming back into power via election and reelection.  That says a lot to me.

[JennyMominFL]

I just did a research paper on this topic. It was my final exam in a class. I also lived through it. I was in the Marines when they wall came down.  One of the things I used in my paper was a study by  the EU ,on the integration of eastern Europe into the west. the study was maybe 2 years old  More than 60% of the people in the former Soviet Union said life was better under Communism.  The more eastern countries are less happy  about the current world.  It's also divided by age. Young people in the former Warsaw Pact  nations like the way things are now, older people  , with a plurality, preferred their life under communism. The numbers were much better in favor of the current system before the crash of 2008. Most of the people who preferred Communism  say their current life is filled with uncertainly. They missed having guaranteed job and a place to live. A common expression in those countries is "Under communism I had  money but no choices(in purchasing, now I have choices but no money" 

[viajero]

Whatever the caveats, I still think they deserve credit for stepping down from power when they lost at the ballot box, spending years in the minority, and then coming back into power via election and reelection.  That says a lot to me.

 

I don’t think the Sandinistas really had much of a choice by the time they did hold “real” elections in 1990.  They were pretty much in same the position as Pinochet, facing complete international isolation if they didn’t.

 

The fact that they were eventually voted back into power was mostly due to the weakness of a divided opposition, as well as Ortega’s political craftiness.  What put the Sandinistas over the top in the 2006 election was when Ortega successfully won over the support of social and religious conservatives by doing a sudden 180 on the issue of abortion.  The Sandinistas had partially legalized abortion in the first place shortly after the revolution and I think almost everyone was taken by surprise when halfway through that election campaign Ortega suddenly announced that he had changed his mind. He proposed (and later passed) a rather extreme new law that not only criminalized abortion, but prohibited it even in the case of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger (exceptions that are quietly allowed in many other countries in the region).  The reasons for this quickly became apparent when the minority party candidate who represented socially conservative Catholics and evangelicals promptly dropped out of the race and threw his support behind the Sandinistas.  I guess abortion turned out to be much more important to those guys than his step daughter’s accusations of rape, which had help sink his previous campaign.

 

It takes a truly skilled (and cynical) politician to pull off something like that. 

 

I’m still not convinced Ortega puts all that much value on democracy as such, particularly given the way he has manipulated the constitution and courts to pretty much almost assure his perpetual reelection.  Not that he probably wouldn’t win anyway given that the economy has been doing relatively well and he has been very effective at wrapping himself in God and the church (in some of Ortega’s speeches he seems to mention God more often than your average televangelist doing a Sunday sermon).  For all that he continues to rail against the evils of capitalism (though these days he calls it "un-Christian"), he has been very careful to not get too much in the way of the local private sector as an engine of economic growth.  So though his foreign policy has been very radical, almost purposefully designed to stick it in the eye to the US), his domestic policy not so much.  His base of support now includes an unusual mixture of old Sandinista revolutionaries, Christian evangelicals (Catholic and Protestant), the working class and segments of the business community.  The fact that many feminists, gays and other social liberals still haven’t forgiven him doesn’t seem to mean all that much.

 

Anyway, I think I’ve kind of strayed off topic and written more about Nicaraguan politics than anybody really cares about, so I’ll leave it at this.

Edited April 30, 2015 by viajero

[ToastnBacon]

Nice post, viajero.

Right, because there was nowhere Cuba could have fit such an airstrip despite having over 300 times the land mass of Grenada.

The Grenada invasion was condemned even by Canada and the UK, an overwhelming resolution of the U.N. General Assembly, and would have been in the Security Council as well had the U.S. not vetoed it.

It's pretty obvious that the reasons for that invasion were not strategic--at least not in the geopolitical sense. Reagan was smarting from the 245 Marines killed in Beirut, and more generally wanted to get over "Vietnam syndrome" and roll over an easy target. A great indicator of how absolutely absurd the whole sordid spectacle was, is the fact that "Operation Urgent Fury" (snort) involved about 7,000 GIs, yet the Army gave out nearly 9,000 medals for it! Pffffft.

JFK drew the line against the Soviets putting nuclear weapons and nuclear capable weapons platforms in Cuba back in 1963.

Plus, the Soviets would have used the Grenada airstrip for contingencies, not as a permanent base for bombers. In the event of a war, it would have been used as a dispersal or recovery airfield for Soviet bombers.

I'm not sure why you think the U.S. needs the approval of Canada and the UK to act against a strategic threat.

Nor am I sure why you are scoffing at the number of medals handed out for Grenada. For each combat troop, there are 10 support troops, so I am not at all surprised that the number of medals awarded exceeds the number of troops who invaded the island.

Support personnel are given recognition for the jobs they do too.

Edited April 30, 2015 by ToastnBacon

[JennyMominFL]

Support personnel are given recognition for the jobs they do too.

You're right. I have a National Defense Medal. I got it for serving stateside during Gulf War One. It's common procedure.

[SlackerInc]

Somehow I'm guessing there has been medal inflation, and it has become like one of those kiddie sports where everyone gets a trophy or ribbon.  I have my doubts the ratio was so high in WWII, say.

Edited May 1, 2015 by SlackerInc

[ToastnBacon]

Somehow I'm guessing there has been medal inflation, and it has become like one of those kiddie sports where everyone gets a trophy or ribbon.  I have my doubts the ratio was so high in WWII, say.

There is more than one variable at play, it depends on the level of precedence of the medal. The National Defense Medal is awarded to everyone who serves in the military during a period of conflict designated by congress, it is a rather low-level medal.

Medals from Silver Star and above aren't handed out loosely, they have stringent requisites, the first being that the service member had to be in actual combat, and distinguished themselves with their actions. The award process involves much more scrutiny for Silver Stars and above.

Silver Stars and the medals above them, aren't handed out to everyone like participation ribbons.

Bronze Stars are given for action in combat, but not always, sometimes the are awarded to those in support roles.

Campaign medals are yet another story, they typically only require that the service member was deployed in support of a campaign or operation; again, they are a rather low-level awards.

I'm not sure what the point of bringing up how many medals were awarded for Operation Urgent Fury proved, other than to express disdain for Reagan and the military.

I think it was a wise move in the 1980s for Reagan to stand firm against communist expansion in the Carribean and Latin America.

[viajero]

I think it was a wise move in the 1980s for Reagan to stand firm against communist expansion in the Carribean and Latin America.

 

 

My problem wasn't with standing firm against communism where it was a real threat.  I can even understand the invasion of Grenada.  My problem was with the blunt, careless and ineffective way Reagan went about it.  It was like his people had on blinders and could only see communists under every bed.  So they went around squashing pretty much everybody who wasn't tied to the local military they could control and damn the consequences.

[ToastnBacon]

My problem wasn't with standing firm against communism where it was a real threat.  I can even understand the invasion of Grenada.  My problem was with the blunt, careless and ineffective way Reagan went about it.  It was like his people had on blinders and could only see communists under every bed.  So they went around squashing pretty much everybody who wasn't tied to the local military they could control and damn the consequences.

I'm not sure what that means without an example, but in the case of Reagan squashing Cuban and Soviet influence in Grenada, it doesn't make sense to be overly concerned with the perceptions of your detractors.

If your goal is to remove the Cuban military and construction workers from Grenada, then you can't be too worried about what your political opponents will say.

A political opponent will always find fault or the counter point, a strong leader pushes forward with their agenda in the face of criticism from their opponents.

I translate your comment as meaning the reason you didn't like the Reagan Administration is because he wasn't afraid of being criticized by the left.

In other words, what you see as arrogance, I see as strength and conviction.

[SlackerInc]

I'm not sure what the point of bringing up how many medals were awarded for Operation Urgent Fury proved, other than to express disdain for Reagan and the military.

 

Yeah, no: that was indeed the point.

 

I think it was a wise move in the 1980s for Reagan to stand firm against communist expansion in the Carribean and Latin America.

 

By this logic, if you are consistent, I've got to assume you don't fault Putin for his aggressive actions in his country's neighborhood.  That right?

Edited May 3, 2015 by SlackerInc

[ToastnBacon]

Yeah, no: that was indeed the point.

 

 

By this logic, if you are consistent, I've got to assume you don't fault Putin for his aggressive actions in his country's neighborhood.  That right?

I really wish you had been more specific, but if you are talking about Ukraine and Georgia, I might surprise you and answer yes, with a few important qualifications.

In the case of Ukraine there is some legitimacy to be the Russian Federation's claims to land east of the Dnepr River, and while the annexation of the Crimea Peninsula is more problematic, it is certainly within their sphere of influence. The history of Russia's relationship with Ukraine goes back centuries.

When Russia invaded Georgia a few years ago, it was primarily to put a halt to their aspirations to join NATO, and I think that is also a factor behind Russia's actions in Ukraine.

Russia pointed to large pockets of ethnic Russians in both countries as the primary reason, but the underlying reason was to stop an erosion of their sphere of influence.

That said, there are some very big differences between now and the 1980s.

In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration did not want to see our sphere of influence erode. Quashing Cuban and Soviet efforts to expand communism by proxy was the right thing to do in the 1980s, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

The Cold War was on, there were two rather large nuclear arsenals on alert to annihilate each other. It was important to stand firm against a real adversary who was actively trying to undermine U.S. foreign policy and influence.

I don't like Putin, and I'd be very glad if he was removed from power. However, I do acknowledge that the former Soviet Repulics are firmly under Russian influence.

It would be very unwise for the U.S. and NATO to get involved militarily with Ukraine, or Georgia. I see the economic sanctions as enough to discourage Putin from going too far for now.

The line has basically been drawn at the Dnepr River, but I think Putin probably could grab Ukrainian land to the west of it and get away with it, let's hope he doesn't.

I'm hoping Putin falls from power, but he seems to have a solid hold on Russia.

[Epeolatrix]

Resurrecting this item as we are discussing the real-life results of the tv movie "The Day After". In the episode thread:

1 hour ago, JennyMominFL said:

It is unconfirmed, but likely that Reagan saw Threads and The Day After and it influenced him to change his stance on nuclear weapons. 

It is confirmed that he saw "The Day After" because the tape was sent to him before it aired on television.

When President Reagan began negotiating arms limitation treaties with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in his second term, it couldn’t be known that The Day After had had an impact on his attitude. But when Reagan’s memoir was published in 1990, a small quotation from his presidential diary from October 10, 1983 told the story:

“Columbus Day. In the morning at Camp D. I ran the tape of the movie ABC is running Nov. 20. It’s called THE DAY AFTER in which Lawrence, Kansas is wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done, all $7 million worth. It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed…” 

The President goes on to write of the importance of deterrence in ensuring that nuclear war never happens, but it is clear from his own words that the film had a profound impact on his psyche. Edmond Morris, who had access to most of President Reagan’s diaries states in his book Dutch that this was the “first and only admission” that he was able to find where the indefatigably optimistic leader stated he was depressed.
 [from the Conelrad website because the rest of the article is relevant. The full quote is, “It is powerfully done, all $7 million worth. It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed. Whether it will be of help to ‘anti-nukes’ or not, I can’t say. My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent & to see there is never a nuclear war.”

Author Will Bunch has written that “in the second half of his administration, Reagan may have worked harder than any president before or since in trying to convert his imaginative vision that he personally could save the world from a nuclear Armageddon into a reality.”

Three months after having seen “The Day After,” Reagan said in a nationally televised speech that “my dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.” [from blogs.e.rockford.com because it had the full quote and more info]

[Umbelina]

https://youtu.be/Y0VcT-XWb7M?list=PLYZE-tYIQNr707UIM3sf7Ho4Km13tC3Y_

This is an interesting debate, in 1984, which kind of turns into a fight, that took place live after the airing of Threads (which is much more grim than The Day After.)  The are all talking about Nuclear War, and arguing about whether it's survivable, and pretty much mocking civil defense, as well as discussing Russian and American politics.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Umbelina

[crgirl412]

So strange to turn on the TV this morning and it's all about Russia wiretapping, interfering in US elections, and a clip of Putin using the Reagan quote, "Read my lips..." then saying "Nyet" on involvement in the last election.

[scowl]

My friends and I thought that Reagan was a temporary misstep in American politics. Surely America will see Reagan is just an actor telling people what they want to hear ("It's morning in America...") and not make this mistake again.

[Umbelina]

For me it's all the witness bodies turning up, shot, poisoned, thrown out of windows...  That REALLY reminds me of this show, and also of some of the real-spy books or stories.  It's hard not to immediately think of this show, more and more.

[Umbelina]

Look what I found!  Full movie of The Day After.

Edited April 18, 2017 by Umbelina

[Epeolatrix]

I remember being obsessed with this stuff as an 80s kid, so I watched everything I could find. The one that did the most mental damage, I think, was a science show called Q. E. D. - A Guide to Armageddon. There are a few vivid images that stayed with me to the point of nightmares, even though I couldn't remember anything else about the show (including the name). The second-most distressing was Testament, because it felt more real than any of the other dramas I'd seen. For interested persons, the original short story has been posted online. It's called "The Last Testament" by Carol Amen.

[Sader87]

Good call on Testament....haven't seen it in many years but I always thought that was one of the best "nuclear war" films ever made.

I've started to have "nuclear war nightmares" again for the first time in over 30 years lately.....very strange....had them once-in-awhile as a teen, 20-something in the 70s and 80s, they basically stopped in the 90s and now they are back again.

[Bannon]

"Don't want to hijack the Forum, I was talking about the special place of Nazis (this episode) not Stalinists or the people who Napalmed (DOW chemical warfare) Tuan's villages or family. That is War. Genocide is a whole different beast."

 

I really disagree with the notion that the millions of political murders committed by the Stalinists were of a lesser moral travesty than the genocide committted by the Nazis. Class warfare, in the form of deliberately starving kulaks, is no more a real war than The Final Solution was a real war. They are both purely political constructs designed to kill peaceful groups of people who were guilty of nothing more than living normal lives. The Nazis arbitrarily declared who was a Jew, and killed them, as it suited Nazi purposes. Stalinists arbitrarily declared who was a kulak, and killed them, as it served Stalinist purposes.  

[Eulipian 5k]

People have gone to war for many reasons, A great many of the wars are fought over property ie land. The Nazi's get Top Prize for bringing a whole Theory that people should be exterminated like bugs for just being non Aryan. They certainly weren't the first, but they brought a science, organized governmental structures, and technology to do it efficiently and relentlessly.

Genocide is based on race and religion, things that you can't change. That's the basis of todays  Civil Rights laws; you can't determine someone's fate for things they can't change (your ethnic identity or your immortal soul). This has really only become law in the 20th century.

The brutality of the Stalinists, British/Germans (carpet bombing civilians), Americans (Napalm - open air cremation), are all of a kind and I agree there is no distinction in the moral travesty for any of these groups.

Dead is dead, but if there is nothing I can do to make you stop wanting to kill me. Even if I give up my uniform, my language, my land, my politics or my property, you still want me exterminated because of my race or religion that's where the World Court now draws the line and declares a Crime Against Humanity. It took ALL of human history to get to this point, but I salute the Nazi's  for providing THE example. Top Prize! YMMV.

[Bannon]

28 minutes ago, Eulipian 5k said:

People have gone to war for many reasons, A great many of the wars are fought over property ie land. The Nazi's get Top Prize for bringing a whole Theory that people should be exterminated like bugs for just being non Aryan. They certainly weren't the first, but they brought a science, organized governmental structures, and technology to do it efficiently and relentlessly.

Genocide is based on race and religion, things that you can't change. That's the basis of todays  Civil Rights laws; you can't determine someone's fate for things they can't change (your ethnic identity or your immortal soul). This has really only become law in the 20th century.

The brutality of the Stalinists, British/Germans (carpet bombing civilians), Americans (Napalm - open air cremation), are all of a kind and I agree there is no distinction in the moral travesty for any of these groups.

Dead is dead, but if there is nothing I can do to make you stop wanting to kill me. Even if I give up my uniform, my language, my land, my politics or my property, you still want me exterminated because of my race or religion that's where the World Court now draws the line and declares a Crime Against Humanity. It took ALL of human history to get to this point, but I salute the Nazi's  for providing THE example. Top Prize! YMMV.

Again, I disagree completely that what was done to the kulaks had anything to do with war. I also think you miss how arbitrary the concept of "kulak" was. There wasn't anything the victims could have done to change their status as victims. Stalin just wanted to kill them. I also think you miss how arbitrary the label of "Jew" was in Nazi Germany. If the Nazis wanted you dead, they'd just call you a Jew and kill you. If some powerful Nazi decided you shouldn't be dead, he'd think up some rationale as to why you weren't a Jew, and keep you alive. It was all arbitrary. 

[Eulipian 5k]

37 minutes ago, Bannon said:

Stalin just wanted to kill them. I also think you miss how arbitrary the label of "Jew" was in Nazi Germany. If the Nazis wanted you dead, they'd just call you a Jew and kill you. If some powerful Nazi decided you shouldn't be dead, he'd think up some rationale as to why you weren't a Jew, and keep you alive. It was all arbitrary. 

This was a bastardization of the System.  I agree that even though there was once a strict determination of who a pure Aryan was, as the war wore on that changed to include certain  other traits. If you had a child with a Swede it could be considered Aryan - Lebensborn, (because that Officer liked that swedish woman, etc, or there weren't enough pure Aryan women around at the time). You may fudge for corrupt reasons who else was a Jew but all actual Jews were eligible for the Crematorium. Because the System to exterminate Jews, Roma. et al, was organized and in place. It is the beasts who set up and ran the system, however corruptly that humanity rails against ; even today we don't allow comparisons of anyone to Hitler - not Saddam, Putin, Assad, Mobutu, et al.

[Eulipian 5k]

1 hour ago, Bannon said:

There wasn't anything the victims could have done to change their status as victims. Stalin just wanted to kill them.

Always true, when dealing with bloodthirsty killers. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen makes a joke about award shows "Best Murderous Dictator! Adolph Hitler!" Let's agree that Stalin and Hitler could have been like "La La Land" and "Moonlighting" in that category if we worked at Price-Waterhouse.

[Bannon]

9 minutes ago, Eulipian 5k said:

Always true, when dealing with bloodthirsty killers. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen makes a joke about award shows "Best Murderous Dictator! Adolph Hitler!" Let's agree that Stalin and Hitler could have been like "La La Land" and "Moonlighting" in that category if we worked at Price-Waterhouse.

I've Armenian friends who don't appreciate how what happened to that pople, at the hands of the Turks, is so little known.

If you don't find a way to laugh, you'll never stop weeping at the horror of it all.

[Eulipian 5k]

16 hours ago, Bannon said:

I've Armenian friends who don't appreciate how what happened to that pople, at the hands of the Turks, is so little known.

There's a new movie with Christopher Bale & Oscar Isaac, that's being advertised, about what happened to the other genocide during that time. Maybe that may bring some light.

[Mrs peel]

On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2017 at 5:01 PM, Umbelina said:

Look what I found!  Full movie of The Day After.

 

Can I just say how much I hated that movie?  Everyone wanted to watch it, there were get togethers to do so.  My friends and I found ourselves rooting for the town to be nuked, the people were assholes.

[Nash]

On 30/03/2017 at 7:20 PM, Umbelina said:

For me it's all the witness bodies turning up, shot, poisoned, thrown out of windows...  That REALLY reminds me of this show, and also of some of the real-spy books or stories.  It's hard not to immediately think of this show, more and more.

That's where the show is I think clever; it's inverted the prism we watch through. The KGB are by and large shown as professional while the FBI seem to bumble about. P&E are killers but are also committed to a cause and are as resourceful as any Bond or Bourne. 

Our reaction to the trail of bodies behind P&E is the result of our values - achieve the mission but minimise collateral and maintain your moral integrity. For P&E, the mission is everything, for them it is a war, in the shadows, but a war and casualties - happen.