Quote:
Originally posted by Mondak
Reagan has been my inspiration and my hero for a very long time. While sometimes people are so afraid to talk bad about the dead that they become saints in death, at least for me, this is not at all the case. At the MondKastle, the flags are flying at half mast and we are reflecting on Ronnie's life right now.
As for User Name, you continue to be a thread troll in a clearly inappropriate way. Either way - you are reacting without facts. Here is a thought. The Sandinistas lost power how? When they could no longer hold power through force (bought by the Soviets) there were free elections. Your heros who ran the country were voted out. That's right - it was the evils of free will again.
The Iran-Contra affair questioned the methods used when the administration went outside the normal checks and balances found in our governmental system. What really was not debated was the goal. It came down to another way to pressure the Soviets to commit their scarce resources. It suceeded in that goal acording to the Soviets themselves after the cold was was over.
As far as your heritage. Do some reading and talk to some of your relatives. The standard of living in Russia is what it is because of corruption plain and simple. The very few ruled the very many. Decisions on what was best for your family were being made far away from where you were and after being filtered through many levels of people - all with their hand out taking a portion of the hard work that people were doing. It is no surprise that in the historical short term, the standard of living went into the toilet. Instead of quoting Reagan here - I will go with Ben Franklin:
Were your bread lines a little longer after Communism crashed? Yep. Can you now stand in the street and protest the bread lines without being sent to Siberia? Yep. You decide what is better. There is a lot of corruption still back in your homeland with "private" enterprise being controlled by underworld figures who got their power from the former regime. Maybe you can go back there and help to clean things up someday instead of being a troll and acting in innappropriate ways. This thread is not the first time you have acted this way on the TFP and I think as you mature a little, hopefully you will not be so hateful. I would think that you could learn some lessons from your parents. Sit down and talk to them about their ability to practice their choosen religion and see how their experience compares to today in the United States. I don't even believe in god, but I do believe in the freedoms that allow me to choose when and how to follow my beliefs.
Try and channel the anger you have for others instead toward a search for knowledge and see where that takes you. At the very least, you will have the facts to debate in a knowledgeable manner. Maybe in the process you will find the respect to use the back button when people are mourning or the forsight to bring this up a week or more ago.
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Please do not equate Russia with the Soviet Union.
With that being said, there was always enough to eat after about 1950, when recovery from WW2 was in progress. Maybe we didn't eat caviar on crackers, but we had enough enough to survive. My father worked at a bread factory (albeit after the breakup, so my family's bread line wasn't too long, as you can imagine). And protests? We wouldn't protest even here in the United States. The only reason Ukrainians can't be sent to prison in Siberia now is that Siberia is in a WHOLE OTHER COUNTRY! Maybe we here in America have grown too accustomed to outsourcing, but no, the Ukrainian government, fucked up as it might be, is not planning to outsource its prisons anytime soon. Human rights are still shit, Communism or no Communism, and corruption runs rampant. At least we were better off economically.
Being an atheist myself, I would have no problem with not being allowed to worship my imaginary best friend. My parents and grandparents, while believing, have absolutely no interest in stepping into a synagogue even in the "land of the free".
I'm not saying the Soviet Union was any sort of utopia, but life there was certainly bearable for the majority of people. The effect of its breakup was more economic than anything else, and the standard of living took a steep turn for the worse. Since Reagan is given so much credit for breaking up the USSR by conservatives, which he does not necessarily deserve, then I suppose it is valid to blame him for the negative effects of the breakup, as well as the positive ones (of which there weren't many).
As for going back, Ukraine can go and fuck itself. Thankfully, all of my relatives have left since independence, and I could care less about what goes on in there. A visit, maybe someday. Having any dealings with it, business or otherwise, HELL NO.