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p4NDemik
United States13896 Posts
On November 05 2012 07:14 sc2superfan101 wrote: I've never heard about Nixon having any racial prejudices. He did not have kind words to say about Jews. He also said a number of other things about a variety of other ethnic groups. | ||
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Sub40APM
6336 Posts
On November 04 2012 11:48 Shady Sands wrote: That makes a bit of sense. I think the school I went to, with its heavy emphasis on theory in the liberal arts, probably meant both he and I were speaking on the same "wavelength" when it came to econ/politics. It's probably why our conversations went as well as they did. On Nixon--the bullet points I have in my notebook were that
Some more bullet points on Nixon before he became President--
Have to agree with the guy you are replying to. While it all sounds like a nice coherent story this kind old man built himself up to believe, his statements do not jive with the historical record as preserved through either declassified documents or, you know, the reality of things happening. That Nixon 'wanted' to leave the gold standard or that there is a 'far reaching plan' among the US national security establishment to defeat the Soviet Union is simply unbelievable. The same national security establishment that you claim was engaged in some kind of grand plan that divided the world into "US makes military stuff, everyone else make better and better soft commodities" was completely and utterly shocked when the Soviet Union in fact broke up. Finally, Nixon was the architect of the Republican party's "Southern Strategy" to pick up angry white democrat voters who were seriously pissed at LBJ for passing the Civil Rights Act, in other words he was one of the key men that ensured that the GOP of today is almost wholly a party of white people. The only thing that can be said about Nixon on civil rights was that he didnt outright reverse the LBJ legislation. | ||
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p4NDemik
United States13896 Posts
On November 05 2012 15:38 Sub40APM wrote: Have to agree with the guy you are replying to. While it all sounds like a nice coherent story this kind old man built himself up to believe, his statements do not jive with the historical record as preserved through either declassified documents or, you know, the reality of things happening. That Nixon 'wanted' to leave the gold standard or that there is a 'far reaching plan' among the US national security establishment to defeat the Soviet Union is simply unbelievable. The same national security establishment that you claim was engaged in some kind of grand plan that divided the world into "US makes military stuff, everyone else make better and better soft commodities" was completely and utterly shocked when the Soviet Union in fact broke up. Finally, Nixon was the architect of the Republican party's "Southern Strategy" to pick up angry white democrat voters who were seriously pissed at LBJ for passing the Civil Rights Act, in other words he was one of the key men that ensured that the GOP of today is almost wholly a party of white people. The only thing that can be said about Nixon on civil rights was that he didnt outright reverse the LBJ legislation. Yup, in the 1971 White House tapes he appeared to disapprove of Jews as he believed they were conspiring against him, while on the surface he seemed more ambivalent towards African-Americans. The nature of his ambivalence towards them seemed to stem from his apparent belief that as an ethnic group they were not intellectually capable of being a threat to him. In a sense, his general apathy and disregard for African-Americans was markedly worse than his pretty well-known distrust of Jews. | ||
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MHT
Sweden1026 Posts
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Boonbag
France3318 Posts
sounds so much like a TV prog interview edit : old people always claim they had shit figured out all the way long, while it's always been a shitfest and a mess nobody can understand otherwise world wouldn't be like it is lol | ||
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Roonweld
United States144 Posts
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Shady Sands
United States4021 Posts
On November 05 2012 20:10 Roonweld wrote: Is there a way to follow your blogs? Like, getting a notification when a new post is made? I've only read 2 now, but each left me thinking. Thanks! paste this RSS link into Google Reader or another equivalent program: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/shadysands/rss | ||
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Azera
3800 Posts
On November 05 2012 20:18 Shady Sands wrote: paste this RSS link into Google Reader or another equivalent program: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/shadysands/rss Oh thank god you posted. Thought you were dead. | ||
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
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FryBender
United States290 Posts
On November 04 2012 08:22 Lysenko wrote: What you tell is a good story, but it boils the failure of the Soviet Union down to far too simple a picture to possibly correspond to the reality. Obviously the things you cite as the causes were major factors, but other factors were important too, such as the handing of the Soviets' political torch to the much younger Gorbachev, his interest in reform, the doors that opened for criticism of the Soviet state from its citizens, and so on. As for the idea that Nixon conceived of a master plan to implement all of this, again, not really plausible. Bits and pieces, maybe, but the idea that doing so would directly lead to the downfall of the Soviet state (as opposed to other more likely outcomes, like a Soviet state with diminished European influence) was remarkably difficult to envision in 1968-74. Edit: I'm currently in the middle of reading Nate Silver's recent book on statistical prediction called "The Signal and The Noise," and he dissects the various views of politicians and diplomats on the matter of the Soviet Union's downfall in the process of discussing what he calls the "hedgehog" and "fox" approach to prediction. "Hedgehogs" view the world through a filter of one or a few basic principles that they try to form into a grand theory of everything. When facts change, they tweak the theory to help it survive. "Foxes" question their own biases and take in a wide swath of information, looking for interrelationships, but don't distill the results into overarching principles. Your friend's description of the downfall of the Soviet Union sounds like a typical "hedgehog" argument, an approach which is often rewarded in academia and the media because it lends itself to being stated simply, but which either doesn't take into account or becomes more convoluted when facts which might stand against the speaker's preconceived worldview are introduced. I would take most of your argument even further and say that really the economical warfare that the US was fighting did almost nothing to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and only Gorbachev's reforms were to blame/credit. The USSR (and all it's satelite nations) have been broke many many times throughout it's 70 year rein. In the 30's (and to lesser extent in the 60's) it experienced famines that were devastating and yet it only strengthened the hold of the dictatorship on the people. So to suggest that somehow the eastern european and soviet people revolted because the country was in economic troubling times is laughable. The only reason why the Soviet Union fell was because Gorbachev was a decent human being and didn't send in tanks into Poland when solidarity was striking. If it was Stalin or Kruschev they would have executed Lech Walesa and every other leader of the strikes, put a new and more strict government in Poland and crush any other attempts at criticism of the regime. And that would have been that. Every time someone mentions how Reagan was this great foreign policy leader that knew how to deal with the Eastern Bloc makes me want to scream. This is an idea that was put into place by conservative revisionists in the late 90's in order to prop up the Reagan legacy. But trust me if Reagan was dealing with a real tyrant he would have gotten less done then Carter. | ||
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sc2superfan101
3583 Posts
On November 05 2012 15:38 Sub40APM wrote: Finally, Nixon was the architect of the Republican party's "Southern Strategy" to pick up angry white democrat voters who were seriously pissed at LBJ for passing the Civil Rights Act, in other words he was one of the key men that ensured that the GOP of today is almost wholly a party of white people. The only thing that can be said about Nixon on civil rights was that he didnt outright reverse the LBJ legislation. *facepalm can we please let this myth DIE!?!?!!? | ||
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Skeggaba
Korea (South)1556 Posts
Perfect reading in a boring class ! | ||
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CabelD
United States131 Posts
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Grettin
42381 Posts
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