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> It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US w

by GDC7 5y ago

> It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. Getting involved in a conflict on the other side of the world is not exactly something a moderate would do. Germany had a spirit of revenge after WW1. What did the US have to do on the other side of the world...once again? No matter the other side of the world argument, countries which decided to be moderate were never involved even as they were right there where the disaster went down: Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Norway... If you adjust for education, quality of life and also hunger, then the US didn't look so moderate after all.

philwelch 5y ago
> That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. No, it isn’t. FDR didn’t have tens of millions of people murdered in cold blood.
- GDC7 5y ago
  But he had camps for immigrants. Let's talk about Indian Americans? Again.....adjust for wealth , education, quality of life, etc. The US was really not that moderate if you adjust for the aforementioned conditions. Switch cultures and systems between the US and the USSR...also switch standards of living etc. and the USSR would have been just as "moderate". Perhaps a tad harsher or a tad softer. But humans are humans, their aggressivene/moderate behavior is modulated by standards of living, age, sex, male to female ratio...and not much else. For sure it's not capitalism vs. communism which are essentially the same thing. Modern day religions propagated by the church of the state with the head of state as Pope. Make people believe you have found a system to turn a 300 tons oil tanker into a cruise liner (and/or viceversa), and convince them to elevate you socially to implement (or conserve) such system. At the end of the day that social elevation is the only thing that's real and the ship...well nobody really knows what happens to it, except for some BS metrics such as GDP which aren't metrics anymore, they became the objective. When a metric becomes the objective..it ceases to be a good metric.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    That’s a lot of bullshit to make a moral equivalence between murdering tens of millions of people in cold blood and not murdering tens of millions of people in cold blood.
    - GDC7 5y ago
      I don't believe the US are special. I believe the circumstances that led to the US birth and growth are special. Had the same circumstances happened in USSR, then the USSR would have gotten the same praise of moderation that you are reserving for the US. Same goes for East Germany or Greece or Malta or even Macedonia And so for every instance, you have to adjust for those special circumstances

by GDC7 5y ago

philwelch 5y ago

> That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. No, it isn’t. FDR didn’t have tens of millions of people murdered in cold blood.

GDC7 5y ago
But he had camps for immigrants. Let's talk about Indian Americans? Again.....adjust for wealth , education, quality of life, etc. The US was really not that moderate if you adjust for the aforementioned conditions. Switch cultures and systems between the US and the USSR...also switch standards of living etc. and the USSR would have been just as "moderate". Perhaps a tad harsher or a tad softer. But humans are humans, their aggressivene/moderate behavior is modulated by standards of living, age, sex, male to female ratio...and not much else. For sure it's not capitalism vs. communism which are essentially the same thing. Modern day religions propagated by the church of the state with the head of state as Pope. Make people believe you have found a system to turn a 300 tons oil tanker into a cruise liner (and/or viceversa), and convince them to elevate you socially to implement (or conserve) such system. At the end of the day that social elevation is the only thing that's real and the ship...well nobody really knows what happens to it, except for some BS metrics such as GDP which aren't metrics anymore, they became the objective. When a metric becomes the objective..it ceases to be a good metric.
- philwelch 5y ago
  That’s a lot of bullshit to make a moral equivalence between murdering tens of millions of people in cold blood and not murdering tens of millions of people in cold blood.
  - GDC7 5y ago
    I don't believe the US are special. I believe the circumstances that led to the US birth and growth are special. Had the same circumstances happened in USSR, then the USSR would have gotten the same praise of moderation that you are reserving for the US. Same goes for East Germany or Greece or Malta or even Macedonia And so for every instance, you have to adjust for those special circumstances