ONE person deserves lionshare credit on fall of communism - Ted Turner

[blm]

The day Turner decided to use satellites in space to transmit news worldwide, is the day that the people around the world were able to hear and view each other for the first time without the spin of their official governments.

We learned the Russian people were not godless monsters waiting to enslave us. They wanted to wear the same Levi jeans and dance to the same music. They rebelled against their own "Vietnam War" in Afghanistan.

They learned that we weren't all capitalistic pricks building more bombs to drop on them at a moment's notice while lining our bank accounts in the name of protection from the monstrous Russians.

The politicians were able to piggyback on Turner's prescience.

[iamjoy]

1. Soviet Communism Failed Because It Was Fatally Flawed

And there was a perfect storm to finish off, a convergence of a number of factors

The Marshall Plan which provided economic assistance to help build strong economies in Western Europe. This helped keep Capitalism attractive in war-torn countries.

Satellite media and pop-culture, the people of each country learning not to see the people of the other country as evil (despite what our politicians would have us believe). Western pop-culture, fostered in an environment of relative freedom, was better than that created in a repressive environment.

Ray-gun's game of chicken. The arms race was not entirely about building up superior military, but causing the other side to spend excessive money on defense (depleting what was available for social programs, the old "guns or butter" issue), until they were bankrupt. The Soviets went bankrupt FIRST. Ray-gun's disasterous economic and social policies are still being felt, and will for generations. But, he was better at conning his people (us) than the Soviet leaders were at conning theirs and was helped by American pop-culture.

[AX10]

2. But Ray-gun's legacy is still haunting America today.

Yes, Reagan was a better con-man than the Soviets.

[Igel]

3. So? Are you saying that Gorbie one day on a trip to the West

turned in, saw CNN, exclaimed, "Nakonets ya ponyal! My nastoyashchaya imperiya zla!" (I finally get it! We really are an evil empire!"), and disbanded the USSR?

Or that CNN surreptitiously replaced the similarly acronymed Comecon News Network one day, and people revolted?

The Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, and Russians acted based on their own sets of knowledge, not ours.

[blm]

4. No. I'm saying the PEOPLE started changing first by losing fear of each

other, thanks in large part to Turner's foresight.

[Igel]

6. I guess my point is that the Russians didn't need to lose their

fear of us for the USSR to collapse, and if they did lose their fear of us, that CNN and Turner didn't play a role in it.

Arguably (not that it's an argument I'd make), the Poles, Czechs, and Magyars' loss of fear in the Russians was more important, and it's far from clear that they got CNN.

[ArkDem]

5. Yes! He killed the USSR with a series of 'tomahawk' chops!