obama is gorbachev: discuss

[miscsoc]

obviously there are limits to the comparison but...

i'm serious about this, and i mean the comparison in a wholly positive way. i hope obama won't go the way of gorbachev (imagine what the world would be like if gorbachev was in charge of russia just now!)

[villager]

1. so our government *is* about to fall...?

In a meaningful good kind of way...?

[angstlessk]

2. he does not have a birthmark on his forehead?

[Oregone]

3. Where is his big nasty birthmark?

[angstlessk]

5. YOU stole my thunder...you...communist!

[Oregone]

32. What can I say? Great minds think alike

[SidDithers]

58. Something like this?...

:evilgrin:

Sid

[BlooInBloo]

4. Thread topic is stupid: discuss.

[YOY]

6. Yes quite.

n.t.

[NeedleCast]

16. Agreed

[miscsoc]

17. expand on why this topic is stupid

i think it's a reasonable comparison but i am interested in any counter args

[dchill]

7. No.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Gorbachev was a risk-taker out to change society. Obama isn't.

[backscatter712]

10. I wouldn't say that.

Say what you will about the tactics and deals with the devil Obama took to get a health care reform bill into law (and yes, I'm also mad about the deals with the devil,) but taking on health care reform at all was a HUGE risk!

Also, both Gorbachev and Obama had huge problems with right-wing reactionaries. In Gorbachev's case, it was in the form of old-school Communist hardliners, who attempted a coup close to the end of his adminstration.

Oh, and both Obama and Gorbachev inherited clusterfucked wars in Afghanistan.

So, I'd say yes, there are indeed commonalities. Let's hope that a collapse of the United States isn't another commonality.

[miscsoc]

14. yes, what provoked me to start the thread

was the similarities between the hardline stalinist soviet-imperialist forces under gorbachev, and the american forces of reaction w/ which obama has to deal.

also the russian public turned against gorbachev pretty quickly and refused to acknowledge what he did for them and the world. they preferred tyrannical continuity to gorbachev's reforms, even though they benefited from what he did.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. Gorbachev was wise enough to get out of Afghanistan.

He also challenged an entrenched and corrupt system. Obama escalated the lost war in Afghanistan and is certainly not challenging the system but (to put it kindly) is a participant in the system.

[backscatter712]

34. It took Gorbachev several years, and he tried escalation first.

I'm not holding out much hope for today's Afghan war having much of a different outcome - Karzai's a complete assclown, and now we're the ones trying escalation, but I'm not thinking it's gonna help. Hopefully, Obama does what Gorbachev eventually did - bring the troops home!

[miscsoc]

15. gorbachev was fairly orthodox

he was a reformist rather than a revolutionary. he thought in the conventional framework of his environment, much like obama.

[Captain Hilts]

28. Well said.

And my dissertation is about Gorby!

[miscsoc]

44. ah, well thanks, then

always good to recieve agreement from someone who knows more than me abt the subject at hand.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[backscatter712]

11. Grab your popcorn.

This should be good. I hope the admins let this one stay around for a while so we can play... :evilgrin:

:popcorn:

[Patsy Stone]

12. I was in the middle of responding to that stupidity

and Zapp! :)

[miscsoc]

18. what did that post say?

i'm interested, i didn't catch it before it was deleted

give me a precis if possible, in a way that is acceptable to the mods.

[backscatter712]

20. The user only had two posts...

and he compared Obama to different Soviet leaders... Ones that the teabaggers frequently compare him to...

[ZeitgeistObserver]

13. If you mean is he ending the Cold War at long last,

then yes.

If you mean is he pulling out of Afghanistan, and bringing all the far-flung troops home, not so far.

[DavidDvorkin]

19. My God, you're right! It's so obvious!

Gorbachev: short, bald, fair skinned.
Obama: tall, dark, full head of hair.

Gorbachev: oldish
Obama: youngish

Gorbachev: president of a union on its way down, trying to stem the decline
Obama: president of a union on its way back up, decline some unknown distance in the future

Gorbachev: withdrew troops from Afghanistan
Obama: plunging further into Afghanistan

[miscsoc]

21. haha, i never said the comparison was exact

although gorbachev was pretty youthful compared to his gerontocratic predecessors

the afghanistan bit wasn't really what i was thinking of.

i'm not sure that america is on its way back up, though.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

22. No, but there are similarities especially if you

mean what they call a paradigm shift and what it brings out in people.

[miscsoc]

23. yeah that was what i was

getting at, basically. "what it brings out in people" can be bad and good, as we've seen in both cases.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

24. Both have won a Nobel, but Obamas was early.

Gorbachev nearly had a coup, but so far it's just teabaggers with Obama. Russians still hate Gorbachev even though he did them a good turn, but we'll have to wait on how Obama's legacy is viewed.

[DavidDvorkin]

40. Part of me thinks we're on the way down

The rest hopes that the other part is wrong.

[JVS]

52. Gorbachev was youngish, given the context.

[hunter]

25. Managing the collapse of an empire is not a job for lightweights.

George W. Bush was a miserable failure at it.

Gorbachev pulled off a miracle.

I'm confident Obama will put our own broken plane down so softly most of the passengers won't even know what kind of danger they were in. They'll be complaining about a few spilled drinks when, without a decent pilot, they'd all be burning radioactive hamburger.

[thereismore]

26. I hate threads telling me to discuss. nt

[Captain Hilts]

27. Gorbachev brought the Cold War to an end and the Communist Bloc. Hard to top that. nt

[DailyGrind51]

29. I was touring in the Soviet Union in 1990 and found some of the same invective being used about

Gorbachev that we hear about Obama, albeit, not nearly so public nor staged. Many Russians believed then that Gorbachev was more interested in pleasing "the West", than his own people. Boris Yelstin was perceived as a true "man of the people".

[miscsoc]

30. that's fascinating

it's amazing how people act in the same stupid way everywhere. i wonder who the american yeltsin will be

[Strelnikov_]

33. Obama is Kerensky n/t

[David__77]

36. Let us hope.

That would be a good thing.

[Strelnikov_]

41. Down with the Kerensky Government . .

Long Live the Tsar!!!!!!!!!!!!



~



++++++++



~



Yes, people really are that stupid.


(Comment: Norquist is representative of the Reichpublican status quo in effect until the '08 election).

[miscsoc]

45. would it be?

really, i'm interested to know. depends who lenin is. or kornilov...actually these comparisons stagger into the realm of the ridiculous when you think about them too much.

[spanone]

35. bu$h* is dickhead: discuss

[David__77]

I certainly hope not, but there are superficial commonalities.

Both are trying to stave off the decline of a superpower that is in progress. Gorbachev of course destroyed his country, a fact for which the vast majority of the country hates him. Hopefully Obama does not follow suit.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

38. Russia is still there,

they just went through some tough times. History will see Gorbachev as a hero and a progressive.

[David__77]

42. Well, we'll see.

But I tend to think not. There has been no move toward this nearly two decades. Instead, the rise of Russia from ruin has been associated with sharp rejection of his politics, currently represented by Union of Right Forces, etc. I think there could have been a better path than simply selling all the public property at ridiculously low prices to what amounted to a mafia. And just capitulating to the US in the foreign policy realm was also a mistake. The lingering wrongs of colonialism and persisted and deepened instead. I'm not saying his position was good and had many prospects for a great breakthrough, but I think his serious strategic errors outweigh any positives.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

43. That's not history, that's a drop in the bucket.

There are still people around who had Stalin as leader.

Russia handled things badly, there's no doubt about that. China said that's why they did things the opposite way. I don't see Russia as having 'capitulated' ever, but Gorby did the best thing for the country overall.

[RainDog]

37. does that mean the south is Romania? n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Only if your idea of "reform" is increasing the power of the corporations

and coddling the military industrial complex.

[Aristus]

46. Okay.

Let's see..

1. Young, progressive reformer: check.
2. Reaches out to formerly hostile foreign powers: check.
3. Attractive stylish wife: check.
4. Presiding over a dying empire: check.

There is still time, brothers. I hope President Obama can rescue America from the hyper-aggressive, hawkish, bullying old hard-liners of type who sank the Soviet Union.

[ThomThom]

47. That would be something if he did. Hopefully it will be without gun fire.

I guess once Texas leaves the union, then other states would just have to do it too. California seems like a possibility. Or I guess the federal government could just fold and stop printing money, forfeit on the debt and bankrupt the rest of the world.
Will i still get my Social Security?
After all I paid for it.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

48. Peanuts: Neither peas nor nuts. Discuss.

I'm getting a little verklempt.

[miscsoc]

49. idgi

who are the old ladies

is this a pop culture ref of some sort?

in any case i approve of peanuts and i am sure mikhail gorbachev and barack obama do as well.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

50. Rhode Island is neither a road nor is it an island.

Discuss.

[miscsoc]

54. actually v surprised that rhode island isn't actually an island

i always assumed it was. but i just checked, and it is actually just a small rectangular bit of land.

what is a peanut if it is not a pea or a nut?

a peninsula?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

55. Duran Duran is neither a Duran nor a Duran.

Discuss.

[miscsoc]

56. you have given me a lot to think abt

these are like koans or some shit

[JVS]

51. Gorbachev was a fuckup and really was way too trusting of bastards like reagan.

[Ikonoklast]

53. They both like pie?

Have the letter 'O', 'B', and 'A' in their last names?



I got nuthin'.

[SidDithers]

57. delete...

moved upthread, where the birthmark refences are :)

Sid