I lived thru all this. As a young college student, I even voted for Carter in 76. But after a few years, I got over it. Here's how I remember things. Americans were taken hostage in Iran and while I don't know what Carter could have done to remedy this situation, he appeared to be helpless. And by association, America appeared helpless. Many Americans felt bad about the state of our country. A few years later, Reagan was the man and another situation came up. A few Libyan Mig 23s decided to take on a few US Navy Tomcats off the coast of Libya. They payed dearly for that decision. I was one of many that thought if Carter was still president during this situation, instead of getting shot down, these two Libyans would have landed on the US carrier and captured it, taking all the crew hostage. That was how my perception of America changed in just a few years. I think the world changed their perception of America, also.
It was forcing them to fight at enormous sums for every gain they made and then Reagn ramped up and broke their backs.
Except at the USSR didn't ratchet up military spending in the 1980s in response to Reagan. It was already high, but it remained fairly constant throughout that period. Gorbachev institution perestroika and then glasnost, which cracked open the door to capitalism and the West that the people of Eastern Europe then kicked open.
Gorby forgot that when your rule is based on terror, you have to go full terror - not partial terror. That is one side of the story. And Reagan and the US spent him into oblivion.
Well, I think it is safe to say the entire Soviet system was based on terror is not accurate. There were definitely true believers.
I don't know about 100% of the entire Soviet system being based on terror, I'm talking about how they stayed in power. Stalin used terror. He probably had more people killed than anyone in history. He had his opponents, or what he saw as opponents killed, along with their families and even their pets. After Stalin died, Hungary rebelled and was crushed by the Soviet military. They build a wall in Berlin that I'm sure more tried to cross over from the Communist side to freedom than visa versa. These are examples of how they did things. I don't think any of these people wanted to stay under Communist rule, they were forced to. Same with Mao in China. Gorby lessened the terror and offered a little freedom. Freedom is addictive, and the people tasted it and wanted more.
Stalin is definitely one of the biggest genocidal monsters in human history in terms of numbers. And I think it is safe to say that the Berlin Wall was for keeping people inside, and information outside. I do not contest that. As the decades went by after Stalin, however, fear wasn't as large of a component. It was the system in place at that point. I base this off of what people who lived in the Soviet Union have said, both at talks and personally to me. Your average Soviet citizen, from worker to farmer to low level party member, knew the system didn't really work well because it was sluggish and too centralized. They didn't continue just out of fear though, it was just what there had been in place now for multiple generations. The collapse was inevitable, much like stock market crashes of the recent past and future are inevitable because of the opposite extreme. It's easy to sniff our American farts and talk about freedom. Freedom is a relative concept. We are very free, but not as free as we could be and in some ways not as free as some other nations right now.
What opposite extreme? Is it seriously your belief that every stock market crash has been caused by out of control capitalism?
Need to brace for laughs. Regulation for people who voluntarily invest. Oh by the way, it's massively regulated for all non-accredited investors. Massively. The most regulated in the world. More liberal silliness that the govt must protect people from themselves.
The stock crashes that I am aware of all were because of investor greed and ignorance, it would seem. And it isn't just stock markets, either. Comic books. Beanie Babies. Baseball cards. Kincaid paintings (wtf?). Housing market. Sub-prime loans. And of course, it is the Johnny-come-lately that gets left holding the bag.
The fear was residual and reflexive by the 70's and 80's. One woman who used to teach at UT talked about her job at a factory that processed potatoes. On days when the trucks with potatoes never arrived, there was nothing to do and they'd just be standing around. At some point, in the early 80's, the foreman started allowing most folks to just go home, and would send for them with the remaining workers if something changed that day. This was a clear violation of the rules. It was enough that if he were caught by party officials, he could be imprisoned. Yet when the local officials caught wind of it, they shrugged their shoulders. Why should all the workers just stand around? If everyone works for the State and everything is owned by the State, standing around accomplishes nothing. Sending workers home to do chores or conduct personal business is a better use of their time. And, according to her, that is when people realized the system could one day end.
