>So you're a fan of tyranny with a socialist face? I can imagine saying
>that
>some particular socialist tyrannies were worth supporting, given the likely
>alternatives. But to call any of them "good tries" strikes me as
>repugnant.
>Further, what's the evidence that the Soviet Union kept the US in check?
>On
>the contrary, the US needed a dancing partner for many of the various Thrid
>World wars it participated in directly or by proxy after WWII. Now, I
>suppose that sounds facile if you think the Cold War was something dreamed
>up by men like George Kennan to make the Third World safe for big business,
>but...
>-- Luke
and Nathan said:
>Big counterfactuals there. Without the Soviet Union, would rightwing
>fascists and McCarthyites have been able to gain so much power around the
>world? Might Debs Socialists have survived intact from the 1910s without
>the full-on onslaught of the Red Scare and the divisiveness of its internal
>divisions? Would Hitler have won power without the German Communists making
>the country ungovernable and dividing the left?
>
>If I had the choice, I've take the February Revolution and the compromises
>of Kerensky, the Menshevics and the SRs in a more democratic Russia. I
>think the 20th Century would have been better off.
Oh fuck! Puh-leeeze!!
Hey, Luke! Does your comment make you a fan of tyranny with a democratic face then?! Don't be absurd. What has to happen for you to call ANY attempt at getting rid of capitalism a "good try"? What're the qualifications? As for keeping the US in check: how many US army bases have sprung up around the globe after the USSR went down? Where's any balance of power now, lopsided though it was? And you think the fSU was somehow in cahoots with the US across the globe? Man, what's next? MiBs and cattle mutilations?
And Nathan: so by your lights, the commies and other leftists shouldn't even have tried as hard as they did for fear of fascism and strongmen? Guess we can ignore those of the political center (as well as the right) and the "realists" ie business who wanted "leftism" stopped, no matter who they climbed into bed with. Any reaction and it's all the fault of "the left": we "provoked it". Now I'm just waiting for some comment from you about rape and women who wear sexy dresses . . . .
Maybe you two oughtta wake up from your precious lily-white dreams about how compassionate capitalism really is, and how the bourgeois could save us all from themselves.
Todd
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