Conversations

[farla]

"Yeah, I picked the Cold War for debate because no one knows about it."

His friend nods. "Yeah."

"The Cold War?" I repeat incredulously. "The Cold War? You don't know anything about the Cold War?"

"It was, like, a nuclear arms race," says another boy dismissively. "Now if it was a Hot War or something, that'd be different. With actual fighting. But the Cold War wasn't even a real war."

"We sponsored wars in dozens of countries!" I shout. "We - you can't just - we sponsored wars in dozens of countries! Dozens of - I hate you people."

Comments

[jaxmalcolm.livejournal.com]

Just curious, but what, pray tell, exactly was the planned debate? I mean, what? See who sided with capitalistic democracy and who sided with communism?

[wintersheir]

Kill them plz.

[wintersheir]

It offends me down to my very IB History for Four Semesters core.

[farla.livejournal.com]

It was about what started the Cold War. Although I'd be up for your option - personally, I'd like take a stab at reevaluating communism and/or socialism and seeing if the economic model itself has any merit. (I'm toying with the idea there isn't a one-size-fits-all economic/political style, but different systems that function in different situations.)

[farla.livejournal.com]

Ah. That's the fault of your educational system. In our glorious school system, we stall about at the Industrial Revolution each year, although once we got up to the Civil War because the teacher skipped forward (People died. Then we won. The black people were happy. Nothing bad ever happened again.). This is the first year of history we've ever gotten into the reconstruction after the Civil War, let alone out of America.

^^ And we're AP History, meaning no one else in the whole school is learning this. Whee!

[jaxmalcolm.livejournal.com]

Stop me if I sound ignorant (because I haven't really dwelled on it too much -- not that it's not an in interesting subject), but I personally think that there was tension between the United States and Soviet Russia from the very get-go of Russian communism (hence the wariness about bolshevism back around the Great Depression). What really revived the US's hatred and paranoia of the group, however, is, in my opinion, the establishment of the Soviet Union as a serious and formidable superpower after World War II. All of a sudden, the United States realized that the USSR had the ability to influence reestablishing nations towards communism, rather than the capitalism and democracy the US is more comfortable with.

And I'll agree with you. There isn't a one-size-fits-all style. What works for some countries doesn't work for every country. Even worse, what works for some countries in a certain time period doesn't work for every country all the time. For example, the United States is capitalist. It can't be any other way because for one thing, it's too large, and for another, it's been capitalist for over two hundred years, right into a time period where it's best to be capitalist. It's too difficult to reformat the country now.

However, communism (for the most part) works for small, close-knit countries like Cuba because it's easier to satisfy the needs of the small group of people. It's also politically best for large, heavily populated nations such as China because there's too many people for a democracy to really work. However, even so, times are changing to the point where communism might not work politically for small nations who need to take a step forward into the future (and can't do so with people like Castro in charge) or where it's just easier to be capitalist because of the way the international market is.

That's my two cents on the subject at least. I may be wrong, so feel free to counter.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm starting to wonder if capitalism is actually a short-term only model. Pretty much the only time unbridled capitalism worked was in America, and that was really because America had a surplus of resources. Based on events now, I'm entertaining the idea that capitalism might start becoming bad as resources become finite. Capitalism basically favors the short term (ie, your lifespan) over the long term (ie, your children's lifespans) which becomes bad when we're dealing with finite resources and delayed affects. Witness the total inability to get off oil, the 'what global warming?' party line, the pollution and pollution scandals, etc. And with communism, I'd really like to see more examples that weren't tied to a dictator. Or actual socialism. I'd also like to see more real democracies rather than republics. Cursed uninventive nations...there are a lot of good potential options that are never fully realized, leaving people to postulate based on a few incomplete and/or horribly flawed real world versions. Except for anarchy. That's just stupid.