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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (34346)	4/11/1999 1:33:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

Almost everyone is quite young compared to me. I was quite pleased that the young ladies would want to grill me, but the thongs were a little much. The thing that killed the communists in the US (and in Italy and several other places -- including USSR) was the discovery from Khruschev's secret speech that Stalin was a monster. Any person with an ordinary critical mind had known that for years, but to recognize that one's life has been spent living a lie requires more than most could give. Anyone who was communist after 1957 was both stupid and a dupe. You think arguing with Emile is annoying? Try to convince even an intelligent friend not to join the Party when you're living in some rotten southern sinkhole that cries out for revolution. They murdered communists down there without a second thought. By the way, I think you should be declared a thread treasure for your wise and fact-filled posts.

To: jbe who wrote (34346)	4/11/1999 1:40:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 108807

When a system appears to have reached a point of irrevocable collapse it becomes logical and intellectually respectable to urge the adoption of other systems. The healthier the existing system is, the less logical and respectable this becomes. We now know, with hindsight, that the Depression was not a total systemic collapse, but I imagine that to many it would have appeared to be. One of the greater challenges of studying history is remembering that the people we are studying did not have the benefit of knowing what would happen. I have seen this happen: during the mid to late years of the Marcos regime here, there was a wholesale migration of educated Filipinos, even members of the middle class who would undoubtedly have suffered immensely under a communist regime, to the communist cause. There simply wasn't anywhere else to go: the government was intolerable, it was no longer possible to ignore that truth, and the political, economic, and military weight of the "free world" was behind the dictator. Only a few short years after Marcos fell, only the hardcore ideologues were left in the movement, and they have lost any ability to influence the course of events. Oddly, if arch-communist Ron Reagan had succeeded in keeping his buddy Ferdinand in power for a few more years, the communists might very well have taken over. Sometimes all people need is a viable choice.