CNN: We won the Cold War, Capitalism prevailed

[SoCalDem]

and now we have millions of "competitors"...and apparently we are not training our kids to compete..Gee CNN, where ya been?

Those education cuts are gonna help, aren't they?
Teaching to the test is too, eh??


The cold hard truth is that NO ONE "won" the cold war.. Russia just quit trying to keep up with the Joneses (that would be US).. and we never stopped trying to top ourselves, even in the absence of "enemies".. We just keep turning over rocks looking for new enemies, and by gawd, if we can't find any, we'll MAKE some:(

[LSK]

1. ask the Chinese about Capitalism

Or the Europeans even..

[blurp]

17. And the Chinese will say...

"We only need capitalism to be prosperous. Democracy appears unnecessary."

[glitch]

2. Then why do the bushistas want to return us to Feudalism? Poor dim CNN. nt

[Vogon_Glory]

3. The Wingie-Dingies Only THINK That They Won the Cold War

The right wingie-dingies only THINK that they won the Cold War. Sure, the Warsaw Pact dissolved and the old Soviet Union collapsed, and I don't miss either one. But did central and eastern Europe become pseudo-social darwinist kleptocracies like the US is becoming under the Banana Republicans? Has Central Asia become a comfortable playground for US business interests the way that the Caribbean was in the 1920's until 1958?

I don't think so.

[Trillo]

4. Did capitalism prevail?

Or did corporate socialism masquerading as capitalism prevail?

I keep looking for the "free market", and keep hearing rumors of its existence, but I swear, finding it is as elusive and transitory as a desert mirage.

[SoCalDem]

5. Bingo..

Cannibalistic profiteering "won"..everyone else lost:(

[Katherine Brengle]

11. Amen. n/t

[INdemo]

6. Well your are partially correct....

Actually John F. Kennedy set the stage for ending the cold war with the first arms treaty agreement... However even back then the Soviets could not afford to keep up....but yet listen to any Republican and it was all Ronald Reagan's efforts.. If you get a chance read John F. Kennedy,"An Unfinished Life" by Robert Dallek.
Great Book..You'll see what JFK said about the Republicans back in 1949 and man was he ever correct.

[BayCityProgressive]

7. People always talk about the collapse of the soviet union

like it was a good thing. The living standards for all of the people in those former states are now deplorable. More so than under the soviets. Widespread prostituion, the re-emergence of racism and sexism, drug use, poverty, and malnutrition. This is winning??

[SoCalDem]

8. Their old and poor are suffering horribly..and the young are afflicted

with alcoholism & HIV.. The soviet style of life was difficult, but like Saddam's rule, if you kept your head down and minded your own business, the majority of ordinary people at least had a roof over their heads, medicine, schooling and food..

The lacked the right to travel freely and to criticize the government openly, but lots of folks would gladly go back to the times when they had a job for life and some security.

[NewJeffCT]

20. Can you sum up what JFK said?

And, if anything, Reagan prolonged the Soviet Union - his tough words strengthened the hardliners in the Kremlin and allowed them to hold on to power several years longer. Reagan may have been able to end the Cold War in early 1981 through negotiations.

Sort of like how Bush's "Axis of Evil" rhetoric emboldened the hardliners in Iran, allowing them to regain the power they had lost over the past 10 years while the country was slowly moving to become more open...

[Neil Lisst]

9. MTV, movies, rock & roll, and blue jeans ended communism

All that crap about Reagan and his military expenditures was just that.

The cause of freedom rode popular culture, not bogus rightwing propaganda.

[blurp]

18. It was not the cause of freedom that ended it.

The cause of freedom rode popular culture, not bogus rightwing propaganda.

Communism failed to deliver the goods - literally.

"It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred." -- MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

[Neil Lisst]

22. I stated the proposition correctly.

Quibble if you must, but you missed a chance to learn something.

[Katherine Brengle]

10. Capitalism is the biggest failed economic experiment in the history of

this planet.

I'm not a communist, but something's gotta give.

[JohnnyCougar]

12. I wouldn't say that.

Capitalism has been extremely successful for the US, Canada, Japan, and Western Europe. It has completely failed in South America and the old USSR countries in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. It completely fails when the poor have no power. But it succeeds when the poor are educated, able to form unions, etc...

To look at America and say that we haven't been successful is impossible. We are the most successful nation for a reason. Capitalism has something to do with that, but there's a lot more to it than that. And we were successful before we started taking messing with other countries' governments and exploiting the rest of the world.

[rman]

15. Capitalism is failing in the West

The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.
One of the MSM talking point everywhere in the West is "flexible labor market" - which basically means that circumstances for workers change so that they are willing to accept jobs under less attractive conditions (lower wages, longer hours, less healthcare, less protection, short term contracts etc - in any combination). And the poorer "we" get the less power we have. The US is clearly taking the lead, the rest is following the example (not in the last place because of US/transnational corporate influence everywhere).

[Katherine Brengle]

23. If your idea of capitalism is a system of corporate welfare and

monopoly, then you are absolutely right.

But in the 1930s, capitalism fell apart. It was replaced with a system of corporate socialism and government subsidies.

What we think of as capitalism in the United States today bears very little resemblance to the actual economic theory of capitalism.

[blurp]

21. Communism must be considered the biggest failure

"It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred." -- MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Any system that can't even provide toothpaste is a failed system.

[rman]

13. on cue: "Ha Ha Ha America"

http://festival.sundance.org/2006/watch/film.aspx?which=402&category=DOC

It's not just China dissing the US, it's dissing the whole capitalist-exploiting-the-poor system

[JohnnyCougar]

14. Wow....that was good.

I started out being suspicious of it, but it's actually a good message.

[blurp]

16. MIKHAIL GORBACHEV gave the reason. If anyone knows, it's him!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_mikhailgorbachev.html> Gorbachev himself gave the reason for the failure.

"It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred."

The cold hard truth is that NO ONE "won" the cold war.. Russia just quit trying to keep up with the Joneses (that would be US)..

Trying to provide toothpaste and soap powder is more that just trying to "keep up with the Joneses".

[SoCalDem]

19. If every spare ruble went to missiles & military, they let the other stuff

slide.and the people finally said.. STOP IT!..

Gorbie was a great guy.. he gets more credit than St.Ronnie of Raygun..Ronnie was just the front guy..just like on TV..reading words written by others, and not even understood by him..

Gorbachev had a world view and knew that change was coming..better to he ahead of it,than under it..