Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
Yeah, I'm really glad you keep pushing this idea that what people want-- the cause of their Scandinavian envy, is not socialism, but capitalism-welfarism. It's like an honest rebranding. It allows people on both sides to see the issue as it really is, without the false negative associations brought on by the words "communism" and "socialism". It's neither of those things, but people feel like it has to be since the capitalist/communist dichotomy has been pile-driven into their brains for the last half century.
yaaaayy somebody reads my poastsssss

Seriously though, we forget how big a deal the Cold War was, what it really meant, and how it impacted the views of most modern people today. I mean, when I learned that the Cold War ended in 1991, I was like wtffffffffffff that's so recent?!?! Yet so many of us act like it never existed.

We think of people like the Kochs as sinister and machiavellian, but much of their ideology really is about all that anti-communist stuff. They truly believe they are heroes of civilization when they support private individuals in the face of government intervention. They and almost everybody over 50 have a hard time thinking of government in other ways than the Soviet threat they battled, and they're not entirely wrong. I'm not defending the Kochs or people like them, as I think they have additional incentives and their ideas are archaic, but when you understand the depth of meaning behind the Cold War, I think so much is revealed about all sorts of interests represented by the Republican Party. It's things like if you don't know about the Cold War, the phrase "American exceptionalism" is conceited, but back in the early 90s, nothing was truer

It isn't untrue to say that United States was the savior of the civilization. It's a little pompous to say, but the Cold War really was a global battle of ideologies backed by militaries and vehemence, and the US was the main fighter on the side of right. It wasn't so much that the US was big and strong and extra-patriotic, but that the US was able to invest heavily in its allies in every region the Soviets attempted expansion