Framing nationalization

Sports framing could help. Americans have no problem with socialism when it’s framed as “National Football League”.

MH: I’m fine with nationalizing the banks, more as revenge against the bankers than a belief that it will work.

Likely to be quite a popular sentiment, and another potentially useful way of framing the debate.

On topic for a change, though I’m still a troll:

“I guess we should nationalize the banks after all”, said Greenspan. “Recent events have been very interesting and unexpected. They’ve certainly surprised me, but of course, if you know what the answers are going to be, you don’t need to do the experiment.”

“If we’re allowed to continue our work, without interference from Luddites and know-nothings, sooner or later we’ll certainly find something that works. There’s never been a better time to be an economist than right now!

Just to be clear, my goal is a more circumspect bunch of bankers (working for many more banks that are small enough to fail), not re-making society in any significant way. I have as little desire to pay the salary of somebody who can make me fill-out paperwork as I do to pay for B of A bonuses.

But, the Cossack idea has merit. I’m guessing PA’s ludicrous alcohol laws wouldn’t last long with Cossacks.

Because of all the ice cream socials I’ve missed?

Actually, the Mamluks were Circassian for the most part.

That is to say, from the caucasus, probably Christian, but decidedly non-Turkish, i.e. not Muslim at birth, otherwise they could not have been enslaved.

Reagan did indeed try very hard to provoke a nuclear war. You were probably right about the cursive writing stuff though.

16: Wow.

“Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did … During my first years in Washington, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike … Well, if that was the case, I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us.”

This strikes me as a case in which Reagan’s Hollywood bozo nature made him really dangerous. He had pumped out hostile rhetoric for decades and won partly on that basis, and he controlled the nuclear trigger. A lot of Westerners feared a first strike too, and my guess is that Reagan’s military advisers knew that they were playing a very dangerous game. (Elsewhere in the Wiki piece, someone blames Russian paranoia for the danger, since they weren’t able to tell that Reagan was just kidding from the twinkle in his eye. )

God bless Nancy Reagan, and her astrologer. They’re the ones who turned Reagan around.

“God bless the astrologer”, that sounds like Bush nationalizing the banks ;-)

it was the astrologer in handy combo with would-be tyrannicide john hinckley jr!

so god bless jodie foster

ok!

I heard when the Grande Armee marched through Madrid in 1808, some of the locals laughed at the head of the Mamluks of the Guard, in particular Captain Ibrahim’s very large and majestic moustache. He shot them both whilst riding past. Don’t mess with the tashe

Why is the Champs-Elysées line with trees? Because Kalmyks like to march in the shade.

Here’s some Circassians:
http://www.4lomza.pl/fotogaleria.php?id=29616
http://www.4lomza.pl/fotogaleria.php?id=29615

(those are huge paintings btw, one of them used to be in Chicago, the online version above doesn’t quite do them justice)

Dude, Circassians and Kalmyks, don’t walk, they charge. Or here, trot.

Circassians are Caucasian in language but seem to have spread out quite a ways onto the flats. There are a lot of Circassians in Anatolia, descended from refugees from the Russians. All joking aside, the Russian onslaught approached genocide, but it was before the era when genocide was thought to be worth noting. The ethnic makeup of that area was complex, with Mordvins, Chuvash, Circassians, Mongols, Tatars and a few other kinds of Turks.

Ugh, you were so close.

‘discussing’ not ‘discussion’

The idea that the Russians would be afraid of the US/UK is so self-evident that you would have to be a clever boy American intellectual not to realise it. Has everyone forgotten the Great Game?

Or the fact that British, French and, yes, American troops had actually invaded Russia?

The idea that the USSR was inherently imperialistic (post Stalin) was alway a fantasy, as was demonstrated by the Russian pull out from Austria. But somehow that basic fact could never penetrate Western ‘intellectual’s’ thick skulls.

“They got burned by the Nazis (while actually allied with them), so let’s use the Politburo definition of imperialistic.”

Note – when your country is invaded and devastated as the USSR was in WWII, your definition of ‘defensive’ changes.

Don’t forget Captive Nations Week this summer. I don’t know if it is still official or not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least have cake and punch.

Call it wardship. The feudal connotation of incompetent juveniles is just right. The guardians expected to profit handsomely from the service, too.

MH is missing the point. Yes of course the Soviet subjugation of eastern Europe was vile. But it was vileness done from quite different motives than those of old-fashioned imperialism. It was therefore wrong to ascribe old-fashioned imperialist motives to the USSR, at least as a guide to their future behaviour.

Yes of course the Soviet subjugation of eastern Europe was vile. But it was vileness done from quite different motives than those of old-fashioned imperialism.

Which presumably means “done through fear of another invasion from the west rather than for economic gain” – this rather ignores things like the dismantling of large amounts of German industry and its shipping east into Russia, and the degree to which the USSR exerted influence over the economies of the rest of COMECON.

‘Which presumably means “done through fear of another invasion from the west rather than for economic gain” – this rather ignores things like the dismantling of large amounts of German industry and its shipping east into Russia, and the degree to which the USSR exerted influence over the economies of the rest of COMECON.’

I was relatively clear to stress the discontinuities between Soviet foreign policy pre and post Stalin. There’s no doubt that Stalin was a Very Bad Man, and probably did have imperialist designs on Eastern Europe. Whether this was continued after his death is very much more doubtful, and, as I said, the withdrawal from Austria would seem to indicate the contrary. Russian actions in ’56 and ’68 were horrendous, but were all about holding onto territory that the USSR already held, which is rather different from openly going out to try and conquer new territory. Afghanistan would seem to be the exception that proves the rule.*

*pedants corner: I’m using that phrase in the way it’s actually used nowadays, not in the way that derives from the original use of the word ‘proves’.

‘Given that the post-Stalin leadership consisted of people who rose under Stalin, I’ll stick with NATO.’

Er….yeah. It would be more accurate to state that the post-Stalin leadership consisted mainly of people who had narrowly avoided being killed by Stalin.

We aren’t talking about a moral calculus here, but about whether or not the Soviet Union was imperialist post-Stalin. My argument is that it wasn’t, and my evidence was Austria.

Deciding whether or not to be imperialist isn’t a question of ‘good naturedness’, but of cold economic calculation. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever argued that it would have been in Russia’s economic interests to invade France, Spain or the UK, and, to the best of my knowledge, no serious plans to do so have been unveiled post ’91.

Remember that the invasion of Afganistan (which should probably be seen as an ‘outlier’ rather than evidence for some grand imperial plan) did in fact cause the USSR to topple into economic bankruptcy.