(Warning: Angry History Nerd Rant coming in 3... 2... 1...)
Did the Cold War end because one day everyone simply and magically woke up and decided, "Hey, let's just change our attitudes, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and be friends?" Sure, one day the Soviets just decided, hey, let's all be friends. All of their own accord.
WELL, DID IT END THAT WAY?
I DON'T REMEMBER THAT BEING HOW THE END CAME, PEOPLE.
AND I DON'T REMEMBER THAT BEING HOW THE END CAME, MR. PRESIDENT.
Here is a piece of Obama's speech in Moscow to the students of the New Economic School, and I am frankly angry about the disingenuous whitewashing and -- fine, let's say it -- willful distortion and mangling of history. I've been critical of Obama's tenuous grasp of history before, as you well know, but this time I'm aggravated enough to rant.
I really shouldn't rant because I have deadlines for papers and no time, but I will do the following. I shall quote you the bit of the speech that sent me into a fury, and you tell me if you can see what's wrong with it. I'll even highlight the bit I especially want you to read:
Like President Medvedev and myself, you're not old enough to have witnessed the darkest hours of the Cold War, when hydrogen bombs were tested in the atmosphere, and children drilled in fallout shelters, and we reached the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But you are the last generation born when the world was divided. At that time, the American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose.O RLY? O RLY? PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT. Tell me, do you notice anything missing from this account?
And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.
5 comments:
Ranting is good for the soul, Ms. Minerva. :-)
Actually, "it sorta just happened" is an improvement over the earlier Left explanation that Gorbachev ended the Cold War out of the goodness of his heart.
Our president can tell Republicans that he won, but not the Russians?
Yep, it's better in the sense that it's only a little less offensively stupid and willfully blind as the "Saint Gorby" theory. But heaven forbid anybody actually and forthrightly say a historical fact. ;-)
Historical what? "Fact"? Goodness, they let you teach? At a university?
:-D
I know, Lumpy! Facts, not feelings. Shocking, isn't it?
I'll even damn myself a little more and quote John Adams: "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Oh, SNAP!
Yes, sooner or later I shall be discovered and then run out of campus on a rail -- or something! ;-)
I hope you weigh more than a duck ...
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