John Chuckman
COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIAN INSIDER
Young people always forget about terrible times.
It's a natural human tendency.
In the US, it is amazing how few young Americans know anything about the Vietnam War, a war in which America conducted a holocaust killing 3 million Vietnamese, many in the most horrible fashion as with napalm.
It was also a time that nearly divided America like a new Civil War.
Polls find few young Americans know much about it.
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Response to a comment:
Please, don't forget, the USSR lost 27,000,000 in the Hitler invasion.
The loss of men caused a huge demographic deficit.
Also, alcoholism in the USSR, in the 1970s, was widespread and desperate. Many men died prematurely.
But the suffering from the collapse of the USSR did a lot of damage.
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Response to a comment:
I wasn't labeling Russians.
It is just a fact about the drinking, and it did shorten average lifespan.
Some of the conditions in the Soviet era could be pretty grim. You've heard the joke about "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work?"
Americans are indeed drug addicts. They consume about as many drugs as the rest of countries together.
There is a whole range of this activity from cocaine at wealthy parties to people in the streets and gutters consuming God-knows-what.
It's American demand that drives the awful drug cartels of Mexico, but Americans never give that a thought.
In a number of American cities recently, the murder rates among blacks have been dramatic, and it involves competitive gangs selling drugs.
The price of some drugs has dropped on the streets and there is over-supply. This has a lot to do with America's pointless invasion of Afghanistan.
Growing opium poppies had been virtually halted by the Taliban government. Then America invaded, and it has been "let her rip" with a flood of drugs.
This always happens in such regions with America. It happened too in the Vietnam War. Many believe CIA makes off-the-books cash by working with drugs in such places. It was said Air America, a then covert private airline serving CIA used to fly loads out. I don't doubt it at all.
By the way, in early America, heavy drinking was very common. Rum from the Caribbean and home-made whisky.
And it is said that Britain's industrial revolution was fueled by cheap gin for the workers.
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Response to a comment about the need for education:
You get no argument from me about education.
Trouble is, as with so many of society's institutions, public education - especially in the United States - is highly political.
Many subjects and many ways of talking about those subjects are dangerous territory.
And what could be more stifling than the political correctness of local school boards, state education departments, and the teachers' unions?
It's amazing when anything gets done beyond the basics.
With all these forces at work, in many locations of the US, public education likely has little more latitude than in the good old USSR. Religion? Hands off. Political corruption? Hands off. The delirious effects of plutocracy? Hands off. The political corruption of money? Hands off. Why all the American wars? Hands off.
I don't see a lot of hope in general from education, although there always are exceptional teachers who manage somehow. I had a few.
