Half the country was younger than 12 -- or not yet born -- when the Cold War ended

[pstokely]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/24/half-country-was-younger-than-12-or-not-yet-born-when-cold-war-ended/
"When I was growing up, tension with the Soviet Union was sort of a given. I was a kid when Ronald Reagan was president — Generation X — so while we generally understood that nuclear war was a possibility, the newness of the idea had sort of worn off for the country by then. When the Berlin Wall fell and the U.S.S.R. fell apart, it felt sort of inevitable in the way that major news events can feel to young people — one of a number of big things that happened that only kind of made sense.

Even that experience, though, is increasingly unusual in the United States. Census Bureau data from 2018 suggests that about half the country was under the age of 12 — or had not been born — when the Cold War ended in 1991. In other words, to nearly half of Americans, the Cold War is even more of an abstraction than it is to me, someone who had at the time what I can admit was a non-robust understanding of the situation.

This lack of familiarity with the existential threat of nuclear obliteration represented by a potent Russian state and, more specifically, the lack of exposure to the negative effects of the Soviet economic system have often been identified as key factors in younger Americans’ broader acceptance of socialism. Young people who weren’t witness to the Soviet Union’s occupation of Eastern Europe and to the country’s struggles under its communist system — and who weren’t exposed to the United States’ countervailing rhetoric — probably shouldn’t be expected to respond to socialism in the same way that older Americans do.

A poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist published this month suggests that younger Americans do, in fact, view socialism more favorably, though half still view the concept unfavorably."

[pecosbob]

1. Just for the record, we (I) fought a Cold War against communism, not socialism

We fought against things like forced relocation of populations by dictators, political persecution and personality cults, not against the post office and the school system or social security.

[Gravitycollapse]

2. In reality, we fought the Cold War against Russia.

Ideology had little to do with it. We did it because they threatened our global hegemony. Everything else was theatre.

[moniss]

3. The biggest problem

is that people begin talking about things and/or formulating beliefs about things without knowing the definitions of the labels or terms they're discussing. The Soviet Union was never socialism or communism in the sense of Marx etc. It was a brutal dictatorship with Stalin in control. The US has hung onto both of these words as evil incarnate since the end of WW2 without most people ever really having any factual discussion about what either one is. Just because someone takes up a label for themselves doesn't mean that they are what the label implies. It persists to this day particularly when the media is more interested in talking about who called who a name rather than informing their audience with clear factual explanations on topics. A good example of this is the whole Iraq/Iran/Muslim/Saudi Arabia etc. conflict escalation that's been going on now for several decades with the US. To this very day if you go out on the street and ask supposedly "concerned" people to explain the basic differences between Sunni and Shia you will rarely find anybody who can. It is the same if you ask them about these countries/peoples geography, cuisine, music, arts, economy other than oil, history, scientific contributions, literature and on and on. Cable news spent the last 2 decades being on the air 24/7 and this is the best that they could do. They repeat memes ad nauseam and ask a revolving panel of talking heads the same questions over and over endlessly. Even PBS gives us far less than they previously did. Ask 100 people to define socialism and the most likely response you'll get is "the government owns everything" and if you ask them about communism you'll likely get the same response. If you ask them about fascism they will likely answer with a reference to killing whole groups of people just because of who they are. This is the result of over 70 years of poor education in this country. Although I am not a Sanders supporter, or for that matter of anybody at this point, I cringe when I hear the media or the man in the diner talking about socialism because they don't generally know what they're talking about and if they did they wouldn't be so ignorant as to not know that we have lived with socialism in this country for a very long time in the form of some programs for people and some for corporations. It's as bad as the ones who scream "I don't want the government having anything to do with my Medicare". The rant posted here is not intended as anything towards the OP but rather the subject.

[RandySF]

4. Half

[NoDakLinda]

5. Here is another much needed history lesson.

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution -T.J. English

“In the 1950s, the Mob; with the corrupt, repressive government of brutal Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in its pocket; owned Havana's biggest luxury hotels and casinos, launching an unprecedented tourism boom.”

When Castro and Che Guevara overthrew the brutal Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista all the American organized crime syndicate was finished in Cuba. That’s not bad either.

You know, Trump (in the debates of 2016) claimed a Cuban’s father was involved in the plot to assassination of JFK. That’s because there were Cuban’s who fled to America that were disenfranchised after organized crime and the corrupt government was ousted. There were people who just wanted to leave. But those people who wanted to go back and people in organized crime who were working to overthrow Castro together.

In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power when the revolution overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The US government distrusted Castro because of his relationship with Nikita Khrushchev. Before his inauguration, John F. Kennedy was briefed on a plan by the CIA developed during the Eisenhower administration to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland. The plan anticipated that the Cuban people and elements of the Cuban military would support the invasion to overthrow Castro, and the establishment of a government friendly to the United States. It has been suggested that all of this could have played a role in the JFK assassination. Kennedy was furious at the CIA because he was lied to about the people raising up. He said he would smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.

One reason a dictator like Batista and others got control over the country and its people was their poor education and illiteracy. That’s what really does happen when you have an uneducated public.

Thomas Jefferson: “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

Bernie Sanders said, “Castro Immediate initiation of an intensive campaign against illiteracy was a good thing,” And Obama said the same about Castro. I saw that in a video.

You would be surprised how many teenagers have read "The Motorcycle Diaries" (Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a 2004 biopic about the journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would several years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist guerrilla leader and revolutionary Che Guevara.

[womanofthehills]

6. Thanks for this information

Cuba has a great healthcare system. Cubans live a little bit longer than Americans and have less infant deaths. But, somehow, Americans can't do it - so radical for everyone to have a basic right to healthcare.

[2naSalit]

7. +1

Good description. It's difficult to summarize that whole mess.

Welcome to DU.