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The whole tone of it was corny, even for the standards of the time. But there is a subtext in it worth commenting on. Once you agree to engage on the level of a

The whole tone of it was corny, even for the standards of the time. But there is a subtext in it worth commenting on. Once you agree to engage on the level of a "serious" discussion in an existential power struggle with committed ideologues, like Reagan and the soviets, you've given key ground. Even (especially?) communists will tell you the soviet ideology wasn't communism. The soviet state was totalitarian, which is essentially defined by the object against which it constantly militates, which is truth in all and any form. The total war on any truth that could allow for an island of private individual identity in opposition to the movement is the sufficient and necessary condition for the totalitarian urge (Arendt, etc.). What made Reagan the oddly ideal person to respond to that movement was it was his cowboy-actor personal boundaries that were anathema to the uncertainty on which the soviet mentality depended and cultivated in people. It was a unique situation. Obama had a similar "openness," I think, which was not what most people think at all, but rather complete confidence in the boundary between himself and others that enabled him to seem open to any and all circumstances. Reality is nobody ever gets close enough to see the heat and steel behind it. Comparably, Bill Clinton even had more sharp edges than Obama. Maybe the 80's were just this corny, but the briefing note has some tells of very polished people code switching to what they understood only from the outside as Reagan's aw-shucks earnestness.

Loq 6y ago
communists will tell you the soviet ideology wasn't communism. This falls in no-true-Scotsman territory, and should be seen as a self-exculpatory narrative, after all, they sent millions to an early death, yet the societies they created were worse than those that they overturned, and much worse than the best functioning societies at the time. Let's also be clear that Soviets read the works by Marx and Engels in great detail, it's not like they didn't know what Marx and Engels wrote. For example, the Communist Manifesto [1, 2] outlines a few essential demands [3] for a transition that will eventually lead to communist utopia. Every single one of those was executed, and achieved by Stalin. Exactly what "communism" should mean has never really been clarified, but whatever Marx and Engels meant by it, the fact that carrying out their 10 key demands exacted an 8 digit death toll is an extremely strong indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with Marx and Engels ideas. Moreover, the world A/B tested this: two countries were split (Germany and Korea), one was ruled by a communist party (Soviet aligned) the other capitalist and within a decade the capitalist one was doing dramatically better than the other. So much so, that you Soviet aligned one had to turn itself to a prison to prevent the population from fleeing. (Yes I am aware that this is not a repeatable scientific experiment. However it is the most decisive 'experiment' you can hope for in politics and social theory. It is what we must learn from. To quote Marx: "A Nation should and can learn from other nations".) [1] K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. http://activistmanifesto.org/assets/original-communist-manifesto.pdf http://activistmanifesto.org/assets/original-communist-manif... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto [3] Briefly (and from [2]): progressive income tax; abolition of inheritances and private property; abolition of child labour; free public education; nationalisation of the means of transport and communication; centralisation of credit via a national bank; expansion of publicly owned land, etc.—the implementation of which would result in the precursor to a stateless and classless society.

Loq 6y ago

communists will tell you the soviet ideology wasn't communism. This falls in no-true-Scotsman territory, and should be seen as a self-exculpatory narrative, after all, they sent millions to an early death, yet the societies they created were worse than those that they overturned, and much worse than the best functioning societies at the time. Let's also be clear that Soviets read the works by Marx and Engels in great detail, it's not like they didn't know what Marx and Engels wrote. For example, the Communist Manifesto [1, 2] outlines a few essential demands [3] for a transition that will eventually lead to communist utopia. Every single one of those was executed, and achieved by Stalin. Exactly what "communism" should mean has never really been clarified, but whatever Marx and Engels meant by it, the fact that carrying out their 10 key demands exacted an 8 digit death toll is an extremely strong indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with Marx and Engels ideas. Moreover, the world A/B tested this: two countries were split (Germany and Korea), one was ruled by a communist party (Soviet aligned) the other capitalist and within a decade the capitalist one was doing dramatically better than the other. So much so, that you Soviet aligned one had to turn itself to a prison to prevent the population from fleeing. (Yes I am aware that this is not a repeatable scientific experiment. However it is the most decisive 'experiment' you can hope for in politics and social theory. It is what we must learn from. To quote Marx: "A Nation should and can learn from other nations".) [1] K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. http://activistmanifesto.org/assets/original-communist-manifesto.pdf http://activistmanifesto.org/assets/original-communist-manif... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto [3] Briefly (and from [2]): progressive income tax; abolition of inheritances and private property; abolition of child labour; free public education; nationalisation of the means of transport and communication; centralisation of credit via a national bank; expansion of publicly owned land, etc.—the implementation of which would result in the precursor to a stateless and classless society.