by Chris Bodenner
"I think the Komen story is important [because] we need scalps. The right scares the fuck out of the press (for example) because they got people at NPR fired recently, ended Dan Rather’s career a few years ago, etc. The left needs to scare people too. Nothing scares comfortable people more than the destructions of careers and organizations," – DougJarvus Green-Ellis, Balloon Juice, trying to milk what should be an apolitical protest for all it's worth.
Many readers are protesting this post:
I always get a little suspicious when a quotation starts with "In short" and is only one sentence long. So let's take a look at the next sentence Gorbachev wrote: "Instead of a new world order—that is, enough global governance to prevent international affairs from becoming dangerously unpredictable—we have had global turmoil, a world drifting in uncharted waters." And herein is the actual crux of the piece. The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring about more widespread peace and prosperity, and yet it hasn't. That seems to be relatively matter-of-fact and agreed-upon statement. I recall going to the Spy Museum in DC, where a former agent in a video likened the post-Soviet era as "slaying the dragon, only to find a thousand snakes spilling out of its severed head".
You can blame The Nation or Gorbachev for playing up the "Isn't it Ironic?" factor with the title, and similarly you can debate whether Gorbecev's analysis of how we got here is a bit off, but a heartfelt yearning for the days of Mother Russia this ain't.
Another reader:
Seriously? Gorbachev's well-reasoned, qualified and politely addressed essay is "divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric"? He never said we'd be better with an ongoing Cold War, just that the path since 1989 has been in some important ways a turn for the worse. Considering our ongoing economic and environmental calamity, creeping authoritarianism both here and abroad, and stunning divergence between the haves and have-nots, surely you agree with this point? I have to wonder if you actually read his essay, and if you did, whether you are just nominating him because you disagree with him.
Another:
I'm not going to sit here lamenting the demise of the USSR or of European communism in general; both were totalitarian in practice and needed to be buried. But there is a very big difference between saying the world is a better place without the Soviet Union (it is) and saying it's "a safer, more just, or more stable" one.
Is the world safer now? Ask the victims of 9/11 and 7/7, the terror suspects treated like factory farm animals at Gitmo, the people who've been mowed down by the repressive reaction to the Arab uprisings, the families torn apart by famine and warlords in sub-Saharan Africa. More just? Even in contemporary Russia, elements of the KGB still linger (not to mention Putin's near-dictatorial regime); and that doesn't even count what China's government does to dissenters, or countries in the Arab world, or even the American citizens denied their habeas corpus rights by being targeted by the United States government. More stable? I think the Arab Spring, the countless new republics that seemed to spring up weekly post-USSR, and the completely anarchic nation-states in Africa might have something contrarian to say about that.
Another:
Not to be pedantic here, but Ackerman pleads for us to sympathize with people from Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary when reading Gorbachev's letter. Those countries were never part of the Soviet Union, and one of Gorbachev's policies was explicitly that he would not interfere in their internal matters. Furthermore, his overall reform program for the Party was inspired to some extent by the Prague Spring – a movement with which he had intellectual and personal connections. If Ackerman wants to criticize Communism in a more general sense, I'll join him. But in this case I'm afraid Ackerman is the one being overly simplistic here.
"In short, the world without the Soviet Union has not become safer, more just or more stable," – Mikhail Gorbachev, The Nation. Ackerman screams:
I’m embarrassed as a liberal by this shit. The liberals I know — those of my generation, certainly — have no nostalgia for an empire whose chief characteristics were slaughter and mass immiseration. The Nation would rather be Soviet Union Truthers.
"By all accounts, Barack Obama is a nice guy. He’s a good father, a good husband, a family man. To hear his supporters tell the story, he really is a liberal in his very heart who has just been constrained by the circumstances. Maybe that’s all true. Let’s, again, stipulate it. It still remains the case that he governs like a mass-murdering sociopath. He kills brown people on the other side of planet because he feels like it. He thinks there is nothing particularly problematic about ordering the execution of American citizens without a trial. And, lest we forget, he is responsible for more deportations than any other president. Ever. If salvation requires faith and good works, this is a man who will burn in hell," – Ryan Bonneville.
"[S]eeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing," – Simon Winchester (£), The Times. Massie is aghast.
"Havel's anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women's rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first,"- Neil Clark, The Guardian.
"Those who see the Syrian popular struggle for democracy as having already been hijacked by these imperial and pro-imperial forces inside and outside Syria understand that a continuation of the revolt will only bring about one outcome, and it is not a democratic one – namely, a US-imposed pliant and repressive regime à la Iraq and Libya. If this is what the Syrian demonstrators are struggling for, then they should continue their uprising; if this is not their goal, then they must face up to the very difficult conclusion that they have been effectively defeated, not by the horrifying repression of their own dictatorial regime which they have valiantly resisted, but rather by the international forces that are as committed as the Syrian regime itself to deny Syrians the democracy they so deserve." – Joseph Massad, Al Jazeera English.
"If, like me, you scanned the crowds rioting at Penn State last night after the announcement of the firing of Joe Paterno, you may have noticed that nearly all the people there were white men. The riots were about white men not liking to be held accountable … Paterno’s perseverance in the face of his deficiencies was a beacon of hope for many white men in Pennsylvania who felt their power challenged by liberals and people of color seeking to change their ways," – Mike Elk, MichaelMoore.com.
"[It's] hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary edition mocking Islam. The Wednesday morning arson attack destroyed the Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo after the paper published an issue certain to enrage hard-core Islamists. … Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there's no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of "because we can" was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring," – Bruce Crumley, Time.
"Libyan Rebels kill Gaddafi, if American liberals want respect they better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin(: ", – actor Orlando Jones, via Twitter. He's not backing down and says it's "good" the tweet "hit a nerve". Ugh.
The Dish 