During the Cold War, we were up against a terrible enemy who wanted to conquer the world. If we hadn't stopped them, they may well have succeeded. We made numerous micalculations and errors in the effort to contain them, but we ultimately prevailed--and it wasn't because we were, to borrow your phrase, more beautiful.
but we ultimately prevailed--and it wasn't because we were, to borrow your phrase, more beautiful.
...and then promptly began behaving worse than the former Soviet overlords would have dreamed about. Won't let us run our pipeline through your country to the Adriatic? We'll bomb you. Vote for the wrong leaders (Serbia, Slovakia, Belarus, Albania, etc)? We'll overthrow them. Do what we say, or else. I wonder about the Cold War. Was it really fought for freedom? Or for certain Western business interests (most of which happened to coincide with Soviet interests as well).
Stopped them? Huh?
They collapsed on themselves. Without a shot's being fired, the Big Bad Soviet Union collapsed like a cheap dimestore umbrella in the face of some dockworkers and fled like Dracula from the Christianity THAT SELFSAME collective of power now uses to great political effect.
I am going to disabuse you of this fantasy, I swear.
How in hell could they have launched the "greatest peace movement the world has ever seen" whilst still the "Evil Empire"?
How better to disarm the West than to coming limping their way crying "Mea Culpa, Kapitalism!" when (as militant atheists and supreme materialists with their own ideas of New World Economic Policy) they've no semblance, even, of the morality on which "good capitalism" is based and can therefore clean our clocks with precision (if not absolute abandon)?
What in God's name was Bush I thinking when -- before the dust of the Berlin wall had even settled -- he was hooking us up for joint operations with the selfsame KGB and Eastern Euro intel sharks who'd been running heroin our way? I'm sure Clinton appreciated the alleged help he got from the Rooskies with Waco but I can't help noticing our own unconstitutional Federal Police Force's profile has grown more menacing in an almost exponential way since this so-called perestroika partnership of "policemen".
I realize I sound like some kinda freak yelling "THE POD PEOPLE ARE HERE" ... but I just like things to make sense, that's all. The "fall of communism" (or the "abolition of the IMAGE of the enemy" as they put it well in advance of getting down with glasnost) is bs.