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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 8 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.749s | source | bottom
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lapcat ◴[30 Aug 22 21:07 UTC] No.32655071[source]▶
The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet Union to glasnost and perestroika.

Of course Yeltsin was a big part of the problem too.

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duxup ◴[30 Aug 22 21:18 UTC] No.32655216[source]▶
The locals in power have to want to do it too. As soon as enough don’t want it, it is over.

I’m skeptical of the idea that you can impose Democracy.

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hotpotamus ◴[30 Aug 22 21:24 UTC] No.32655305[source]▶
Republicans have long said that the federal government is structurally incompetent and unable to effectively administer a large country. They made a convincing argument with their performance in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I doubt Russia would have been much different.
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1. Maursault ◴[30 Aug 22 22:25 UTC] No.32655934[source]▶
Republicans have long said any government is bad. They want Big Business to be unrestrained, unregulated, pure democracy, at the expense of individual civil rights. I can't tell the difference between Republicans and anarchists, other than the sad fact that nearly all Republicans vote adversely to their personal economic interests to stifle economic opportunity, in order to keep the very richest the very richest, for that one future day when they are the richest of the richest. It makes no sense, because that day will never come because they are voting to stifle their own personal economic advancement for the sake of issues skew to economics, such as abortion and 2nd Amendment issues. Really... if you earn less than $325K/year, as nearly all Republicans do, it is insane to keep voting that way. If everyone always ignored all other issues, and voted solely in their personal economic interests, we'd never see another Republican elected until nearly everyone was rich.
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2. MichaelCollins ◴[30 Aug 22 22:37 UTC] No.32656044[source]▶
> Republicans have long said any government is bad.

Most republicans are not anarcho-libertarians. Asserting that any government is bad is fringe even among libertarians, and most republicans aren't even libertarians.

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3. hotpotamus ◴[30 Aug 22 22:43 UTC] No.32656103[source]▶
> “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'"

-Ronald Reagan

Perhaps you know that Reagan didn't really mean it, but it seems like many people believed him anyway.

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4. MichaelCollins ◴[30 Aug 22 22:45 UTC] No.32656130{3}[source]▶
> Perhaps you know that Reagan didn't really mean it

I think you surely know it too, Reagan was all too eager to use government power and his supporters were happy to see him do it.

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5. hotpotamus ◴[30 Aug 22 23:03 UTC] No.32656306{4}[source]▶
Reagan was sufficiently before my time that I have very limited opinions on what he actually wanted, though I would certainly tend to agree with that. I have no idea what modern Republicans actually want or believe. Obviously their elite class wants power above all, but the rank and file never seem to get much other than grievance.
6. inferiorhuman ◴[30 Aug 22 23:06 UTC] No.32656335[source]▶
"I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." – Grover Norquist
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7. hotpotamus ◴[30 Aug 22 23:43 UTC] No.32656590{3}[source]▶
It's really strange to me that there was a decade where every Republican had to pledge allegiance to this guy (which ended when he married a Muslim woman).
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8. selimthegrim ◴[02 Sep 22 16:42 UTC] No.32692867{4}[source]▶
Doesn’t seem to have hurt Wolfowitz much (well, he didn’t marry but still).