Example Of An Alcoholic Sponsor Letter To The Court: Fill & Download for Free

Yes, it is. Here is my story. I believe the best thing I can do for you is present it as truthfully as possible, in some detail—including the miscommunications and misunderstandings and failed attempts, and all the time and effort and pain and frustration I had to go through before real reconciliation could happen. I don’t want to make it seem any simpler or smoother or easier than it actually was. Rather, I want you to give you a realistic picture, to give you hope that even if you are as flawed and immature as I was, even if your process of reconciliation is as slow and jagged and full of mistakes as mine was, you can get there. My own understanding of this story is still evolving, but I will give you as much insight as I am able.“Jane” (not her real name) was my very first girlfriend. She and I went to a Midwestern college together, and began dating when I was a sophomore and she was a freshman. I don’t have time to tell you the details of how we got together, except to say that she took the initiative to make it happen. I was probably too timid at the time to have done so.She was everything I wasn’t. I was a shy introvert; she was a charming, expressive extravert who could work a room like a movie star. I didn’t have many friends; she had hundreds, and she was always dropping the names of famous people she knew. She was a natural leader and a talented artist. I am average looking, but she was extremely pretty, with perfect skin, large eyes, and delicate features. I was depressed and lethargic; she seemed to have boundless energy and initiative. I was a disheveled, bohemian intellectual, wearing ragged clothes and listening to far-out jazz and reading existentialist literature. She was an ambitious social climber who went to operas and art galleries and read business magazines. Most importantly, while I suffered from crippling feelings of inferiority, she had incredible self-assurance and a sense of entitlement. From the stories she told, I got the impression that anybody, no matter how inaccessible to the rest of us, would give her anything she asked for. Just about every adult that we knew in common, including my parents, thought she was one of the most impressive people they’d ever met. She was very aware of this, of course.Why she was attracted to me, I still don’t really understand. At the time, it seemed like an impossible dream come true. I had never experienced much emotional closeness or affirmation from any woman before, especially not the message that I was a desirable person. To get that from a “goddess” like her was an indescribable high, as addictive as a drug. I became intensely, unhealthily, emotionally dependent on her. I was desperately afraid it wouldn’t last, and I tried desperately hard to make sure it would.Things were great for a while. We spent many hours together, talking about our thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams. She wrote me very long, very affectionate letters, telling me how much she liked me. We talked about marriage a few times, though we never made any plans. She asked me to write a letter to her father, asking for his permission to court her, and I did.But at the same time that I was starving for closeness, she felt the need for distance. I wanted more and more of her; she wanted less and less of me. After two or three months together, she started to pull away, in ways that were insensitive, misleading, and hurtful. She should have broken up with me. But instead, for reasons I still don’t understand, she led me on for a long time. Ladies, if you want to learn how to emotionally a weak, insecure man, take notes on this next section.I would invite her to things again and again, and she would decline, usually saying she wanted more time with her roommate. Or she would agree, only to cancel at the last minute because she got a babysitting opportunity or something. When we would talk on the phone, she would make strange excuses to end the conversation. Frequently it would be two weeks at a time, or more, when I wouldn’t see her. Once, after a period like this, I said, “It’s been a long time, and I’ve missed you.” She said, “We should have breaks from each other more often.” And yet, there were times during that period, fewer and farther between, when she would be just as affectionate as before.Once, I approached her in the hallway while she was talking to a friend. She continued her conversation for two or three minutes without acknowledging me, then turned to me, said “I’m late for something,” and walked away.Many times, I asked her what was wrong, whether we still had a relationship, and she would always say, “Everything’s fine. I’m just busy, not avoiding you. We’ll get together more when I’m less busy.” But she never got any less busy. Over spring break, for example, we talked only once, for about 10 minutes. Once I asked her, “What do I have to do to spend more time with you?” She said, “You’re the man, so take more initiative!” That was confusing! It was clear that whatever we had would be entirely on her terms. I felt powerless. Like George on Seinfeld:GEORGE: [to Jerry] No, everything is not going good. I’m very uncomfortable. I have no power. I mean, why should she have the upper hand? Once in my life I would like the upper hand. I have no hand—no hand at all. She has the hand; I have no hand... How do I get the hand?...GEORGE: You can’t break up with me, I’ve got hand!NOEL: And you’re gonna need it.This went on for several months, and I got increasingly frustrated, to put it mildly. I should have realized it was over and moved on. In fact, I should have refused to accept such treatment and ended things myself. But I was too deeply dependent on her. I had never been in a relationship before and didn’t think I ever would be again. I was terrified of being alone. I had very little self-respect. I would have put up with almost anything, hoping she would change, hoping things would go back to how they were.I desperately wanted resolution. So I asked her, “Please let’s have a conversation. It’s very important.” My intention was to apologize for own offenses, have a real conversation about what had happened, and express to her how much pain she was putting me through. I asked to meet with her at a specific place and time, and she agreed. I spent several nights praying and emotionally preparing for this encounter. I thought to myself, “If I turn the other cheek, if I humble myself before her and admit my own part, if I treat her with as much civility as I am able... then things will go well, then I will feel better.” (Where did I go wrong with this? I still don’t fully know.)And then, the night before our meeting, as she had done so many times before, she said, “I can’t make it; I have a meeting for a project I’m working on.” I felt very disrespected. Once again she had shown how low of a priority I was to her. So we rescheduled, and I told her, “Please don’t plan any meetings right before or after this, and please don’t bring your cell phone, because I want your undivided attention for a while.” She said, “You’re scaring me.”We did meet. She did arrive late and leave early because of other meetings. But we did get to talk. I said, “I’m sorry for the times I’ve been prickly to you these last few months.” (Thinking to myself, “Girl, you’re lucky because you’ve only experienced about 1% of the anger I’m feeling toward you.”) And she said, “Yes, you have been.” I said, “Is there anything else I need to apologize for?” She said, “Yes—you remember that letter you wrote to me last month, expressing your thoughts on relationships and sexuality? I showed it to my mom and my girlfriends, and we agreed that it was inappropriate.” I was mortified. Then I asked her, “Why have you been so distant?” She said, “Well, I realized six months ago that I wasn’t interested in you anymore. I don’t know why you didn’t get the message.” This caught me completely off guard. I don’t remember what we talked about after that. I gave her some flowers I had picked as a gesture of goodwill, and I walked home in a daze.To be fair to her, she didn’t say it in these words, but what I heard was, “Once I got to know you more deeply, I realized that you weren’t good enough for me.” I’ve read that arrogant people are much more susceptible to being manipulated by flattery, because they believe it. I suppose the opposite phenomenon is that people who see themselves as worthless will interpret every failure and rejection as a confirmation of that.That night was the worst I’ve had in my life. None of my friends were there for me; all of them were busy doing something else. I was so desperate that I called my parents and filled them in on what had happened. They said, “It’s not that big of a deal. You’ll get over it.” I expressed how much she had hurt me, and they said, “She’s a great girl, so she can’t possibly have been that bad. You must be overreacting.” I told them how angry I was at her, how I was having thoughts of hurting her, and they said, “That’s sinful. You should repent.”I went into the bathroom with a knife and started jabbing myself in the leg (though I was too wimpy to draw blood.) I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. It was an alcohol-free campus, so I drank a big dose of Nyquil. Nothing helped. I lay awake that night writing vicious letters to her (which I am glad to say I never sent). I don’t remember much about the next few weeks. I got through my classes, but I don’t think I was very functional otherwise.After the shock and despair came a volcanic eruption of rage. I had no idea I was capable of being that angry and bitter at another human being. I can’t describe to you what I was feeling, except to say that when my wonderful, beloved grandfather died, I felt deep grief and loss. I cried a lot. But I would rather go through that ten times than experience this again. That time I was surrounded by other mourners, people who loved him and loved me too. This time I was totally alone in it. That time I had full permission to grieve, the assurance that it was the proper thing to do. That grief felt “clean.” This one was mixed with guilt and shame and anger—including guilt for being so angry, anger at myself for being such a chump that she would treat me this way, and shame for being so weak and unable to “get over it.”Now that I think about it, it makes sense—to have someone you love die should be less traumatic than to have someone you love say, “I don’t love you, and I don’t want to have anything to do with you.” In both cases, the person is lost to you, but in the second case there’s the additional blow to your sense of self.I’m very ashamed of how I treated Jane after that. In light of my subsequent behavior, I could no longer believe I was a nice person. I’m also at a loss for how to explain it. I suspect that she tapped into a reservoir of rage that I had been storing up since long before I met her.A few months later, she sent me a friendly, casual e-mail. I think she wanted to resume contact, and she probably saw this as the first step in working toward peace. But I took this as an opportunity to express all the anger I’d been bottling up, and I fired back a furious, accusatory reply. I told her, “You put me through months of emotional torture. You lied to me. You violated my trust. How dare you act as if everything is OK?” Poor girl, that must have surprised her. As I saw it at the time, to respond with civility would have been to betray myself, to let her off the hook. I didn’t want to have a pleasant chat. I wanted her to pay—or at least own what she did and come crawling back to me.She responded with some accusations of her own, things she said I did to her. I really didn’t remember them that way, so it’s possible that she was telling herself a story to feel better about how she had treated me. I don’t know. And she said, “God made it clear to me that we weren’t supposed to be together. It saddens me that you were unable to see that.” Today, I believe she was right. God really didn’t want us together, and I really was unable to see it. But in that moment, I interpreted her remarks as self-righteous and condescending, an attempt to take the high ground and avoid responsibility for her actions. I was pissed off.This is when things got really confusing. One night, both of us went to a Christian worship service. People were washing each other’s feet. I approached her and said, “I want to wash your feet.” She said, “I want to wash your feet too.” It was a moving experience for both of us.She must have thought we were reconciled, because whenever she walked by me she would smile. We had a couple of brief, friendly conversations. But soon I realized I was still very hurt and couldn’t bear to be near her. And as much as ever, I still wanted to punish her. I thought, “You’re not getting off that easily.” So for a long time, she would smile at me as she walked by, and I would deliberately, obviously refuse to acknowledge her.The next fall, when we were back at school, she sent me a friend request on Facebook. Now, I felt, I could get some “hand.” I told her, “If I get an apology, we could be Facebook friends... And maybe even real friends.” She said, “I thought we had been through that, but sure, whatever you say.” And a couple of weeks later I got a card in the mail from her. It said something like, “I’m sorry you didn’t understand that our relationship was over, and I’m sorry your feelings were hurt. Have a nice life.” I immediately wrote back to her, correctly but very ungraciously, “I don’t accept your apology, because that was not a real apology. These are the things I want you to apologize for.”That was our last interaction for a long time. I didn’t get any more smiles from her. For about two more years, I had to see her almost daily on campus, watching her flirt with other guys, reading stories in the student newspaper about things she was doing, overhearing people talk about how amazing she was. To me, it was a regular reminder of my own inadequacy. Every time I saw her or heard her name, even years afterward, it gave me a powerful physical reaction, something like a punch to the solar plexus.It’s strange, though, that as much as I hated her, I still cared about her. During this time, she ran for student body president. Of course, I dreadfully wanted her to lose. To my great surprise, she did—by a large margin! (Explain that.) I heard through the grapevine that on the same day, she got some news of a family crisis. One of my friends told me she saw her crying that evening. My heart softened toward Jane in that moment. For a little while, I felt sympathy for her. But the old feelings soon returned.Anyway, there was no contact between us for about three years. Neither of us had gotten what we wanted, but we had given up. It was a stalemate. During this time, I became mistrustful of women. I was in a couple of so-called relationships, but they were very brief and shallow and mostly physical, using each other. I might have become a “player” if I’d had “game,” but I didn’t, and I think I still had too much of a conscience. So I was mostly just lonely and frustrated.A major priority in any sort of recovery is forgiveness, letting go of resentments. And of course, I had this gigantic resentment that I had never been able to let release, though I must say I had really tried.One of the most influential people in my growth journey during this time was a woman named E. She’s someone I would describe as a mystic. We formed a deep platonic friendship as we experienced healing together. In some striking ways she’s the opposite of Jane: she’s more concerned with the inner life than with worldly things, she prefers a few deep friends to a lot of shallow ones, she’s a straight talker who doesn’t play games, she doesn’t use distancing tactics, she’s a loyal and dependable friend, she makes space in her life for contemplation, and she’s open about her own pain and weakness. Through many encouraging words and acts of love, she helped me rebuild my sense of worth and masculinity.Also, I heard for the first time, “You were wronged.” This validated my feelings and allowed me to move forward.I started seeing Jane in dreams. Very short ones. She was standing near me, and each successive dream she would be a little closer, until finally I was giving her a hug. E told me, “Don’t be hasty about acting on those. Be very careful. Protect yourself.”At the same time, I was working through the Twelve Steps—something I would recommend to anybody else here who is a human being. They involve making a list of your resentments, acknowledging your character defects and your powerlessness over them, committing them to your higher power, and then working to make amends to those you have wronged. I wrote many pages on Jane. And the more I wrote, the more I began to see how much I was responsible for, how much my own flaws had contributed to what happened, how much I had set myself up for pain, and how unfair I had been to her. I had been self-centered, I hadn’t respected her boundaries or hesitations, I had ignored a lot of things she was trying to communicate to me, and I had given her actions the least charitable interpretation possible, making her out to be more of a monster than she actually was. If any of you had tried to tell me these things, I would have punched you in the face. I was in too much pain to handle this kind of criticism. I had to come to these realizations on my own.Finally, it came time to make amends to her. She was in town visiting some other people for a short time, and I took the opportunity to invite her to meet me at a coffee shop. She accepted. I remember the encounter vividly. It was early afternoon on a warm day, and as I was parking my car, I saw her walk in. I had butterflies in my stomach. When I got inside, she gave me an awkward hug. I bristled and tensed up a little bit. I bought her a drink. The store was a small, crowded place, and we sat down at a tiny table in the corner. My sponsor had recommended, “Plan what you’re going to say, keep it brief, and don’t improvise.” So over the din of the other customers, I read her a brief letter I had written beforehand, apologizing specifically for how I had wronged her. Although she’s the kind of person who always projects a cool and unruffled countenance, I could tell she was affected by my words—uncomfortable, but also relieved. I gave her the paper. And she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry too. I know I treated you badly, and I know I hurt you.” Then (surprise) she said, “I’ve got another appointment very soon!” I thanked her and left. It was a climactic moment for my soul, and I wanted the scene to reflect that. I wanted to see doves flying around, or something. I wanted to hear orchestral swells in the background, not traffic noises. I wanted a big emotional release. Instead I felt calm and kind of numb. But when I got home I knew the resentment was gone.If this were a short story, that would be a good place to end it. But life is anticlimactic. Several months later, she was in town again, and this time she invited me to have a drink with her. It was awkward. Although I no longer held a grudge against her, all of my defense mechanisms were still in full force, and I found it impossible to have a relaxed conversation with her. I was too inhibited to get many words out. And for a couple of weeks afterward, I became obsessed with her again, thinking, “Maybe we’ll get together again, and maybe it will be better this time.” (In case anybody thinks I’m a smart person, try to account for this!) I invited her to meet me again, and she declined, saying “I’m too busy.”The last interaction I had with her was a about three years ago. She asked me to drive her somewhere, about an hour away, so we had a conversation in the car. And this is when I finally realized it: she was broken too. Her issues were so different from mine that I had never been able to see them before, but now, with some more maturity and perspective, I could. She was narcissistic—she talked the whole way there about her abilities and her achievements and her powerful connections, and she barely listened to me at all. She needed to be the center of attention, constantly admired by others. Her identity was wrapped up in her accomplishments and performance. She had a very hard time admitting weakness. She wasn’t very self aware. She had to keep herself constantly busy. She had an “Avoider” attachment style and few long-term relationships. And then I thought back on our time in college, and some of the anomalies made sense. For example, I realized that not everybody had worshiped her, that there had been other people who were put off by her.My feeling about her that day was, “Wow, you’re still gorgeous. And I definitely couldn’t keep up with you and all the things you’re doing. But even after an hour, I already find you obnoxious, and I don’t want to be around you anymore.” And strangely, that’s just what I needed to finally let her go. She had become so much less threatening, so much less godlike. She no longer made me feel so small in comparison. And then I was able to acknowledge her good qualities, too.Not long ago, I heard through some mutual acquaintances that she was engaged. I don’t know much about her fiancé except that he’s a tall, handsome, high achiever. He’s probably a hotshot businessman. I’m sure he’s way cooler than I am. But I knew I had made progress, because I didn’t have a reaction. My stomach was fine. I thought, “Good luck to you, Jane,” and moved on.And the latest chapter in the story is sharing it with others. There are still some things I left out because they’re too hard to admit. But every time I return to these memories, I am a little more comfortable with them, a little less reactive. This allows me to be more objective and insightful about what really happened. Thanks for reading.

Joseph StalinPros:Collectivized agriculture and ended famines. Did so despite enormous resistance. Without this, industrialization would have been impossible.Industrialized the nation, enabling the creation of weapons to defeat Hitler. Hitler’s plan was to conquer and exterminate all Jews and communists, half of the Slavs, and enslave the remainder.Annexed the Eastern Bloc and moved fascist collaborators, bringing stability to these regions for decades to come.Took a semi feudal, peasant agrarian nation and turned it into the world’s second largest industrial economy, doubled the life expectancy, brought freedom from homelessness, healthcare, education, retirement, guaranteed employment, free daycare, and other benefits to all citizens. After Stalinism was abandoned by Khrushchev the death warrant for the USSR was signed. It would only be a matter of time.Cons:In hindsight the purges should not have happened.The Doctor’s Plot was caused by atherosclerosis, as deduced by his private physician on autopsy. This can cause a strengthening of some inclinations, such as suspiciousness becoming paranoia.The Katyn Massacre was cruel.USSR mortality numbers2.76 million. This list is here, with sources: death toll 2.pdfThis is the death toll of the actions of the USSR.The Holomodor was not intentional and should not be counted. Alexander Finnegan's answer to What is the history of famines and starvation in Russia 1850-present day?All the other numbers you are used to hearing have been shown to be inflated and exaggerated, many fabricated.This document is based on reliable research from respected authors and official figures.The Black Book of Communism has been shown to be a fraud. Alexander Finnegan's answer to What is the most biased book you’ve ever read?This includes the Great Purges, the NKVD Polish repressions, the transfer of various populations that resulted in death, the gulags, etc. Alexander Finnegan's answer to Why did Stalin kill the kulaks?Gulag numbers are here: number of gulag.pdf 1,053,829 died in the gulag. But it must also be remembered that this includes people who died from natural causes. The death toll went up during WWII because everyone in the nation was on food rations so there was no starvation, but sick people and older people sometimes succumbed out of the stress. There were also outbreaks of diseases that caused deaths. Solzehnitsyn Lied pdf.pdf,The Great Purges included 777, 975. But this includes a large number that were sentenced to execution but it was never carried out. The Great Purges were not as top down as one might guess. Alexander Finnegan's answer to Was Stalin central to the Great Purge of the 1930's?The PurgesIt has been shown that the purges were more complicated than one might imagine. Russia had always been under great pressure from attack on all sides. Within a few years Russia had seen the Tsar overthrown, a bloody civil war sponsored by 18 imperialist nations, conspiracies within his own party as discovered earlier in an undercover sting called “Operation Trust.” 37 volumes of conspiracies and treachery were discovered. The intelligence services would arrest people and then torture them until they admitted they knew something, believing that something had to be happening given the threats from outside the country, particularly the Nazis and Japan. People would say anything to make the torture stop. This led to more arrests and tortures. Members of the party, the factory workers, and everyone in the society believed there were conspiracies afoot. Stalin was terrified of the revolution being toppled. He also knew that Germany planned on invading for certain by 1939 and the country was not ready. Production shortfalls led to the belief by members of the party that there was intentional sabotage. This led to the estimation that based on intelligence (faulty) that it was “for certain” there were a certain number of traitors. This led to quotas. The individual members of the party at the lower levels began to increase their numbers to give the impression of loyalty so they wouldn’t be blamed. The entire thing became its own system of feedback loops. As documents have not been released it is not known how many conspiracies there were, or how they could know. This is not the first time this has happened in history.During the Red Scare in America a sense of great fear and paranoia overcame the American public. Each accusation led to more, and the paroxysm of fear overcame the bourgeoisie in America. It reached critical mass, ruining the lives of many before people took a step back and stopped it. This also happened with the ramp up to the Iraq war after 911. America was terrified after the attack. It felt powerless. It was reported that Dick Cheney almost had a nervous breakdown. The response was to pressure the intelligence services to find out who caused 911 and to root out the terrorists. This led to expectations. The intelligence services began to see conspiracies where they did not exist. Anything that could remotely be seen as negative was. There became a genuine belief that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. This led to a mass hysteria in the U.S. It was rumored that Saddam was developing biological weapons that would be released to terrorists. The U.S. invaded Iraq. It would be found there were no WMDs. The U.S. also started the “War on Terror,” which saw conspiracies where they did not exist. Torture began to be used to get information, but this information was unreliable. It led to false accusations which led to more arrests. Then drone attacks, indefinite detention, and black op cites. The large scale surveillance program began. Likewise, the Salem Witch Trials took on a similar tenor. Mass accusations, paranoia, murders, and more repression. Feedback loops of torture, accusations, more torture followed. But somehow they never seemed able to get to the root of the problem. Enemies were everywhere and nowhere. People were tortured with the expectation that they would say something incriminating. Protestations of innocence were regarded as lies. But then the torture led to them getting whatever they wanted to hear because torture is an unreliable way to get information as people will say anything to make the torture stop.Released documents show no disparities in Stalin’s agreement to the repressions and his own personal thoughts. They confirmed he believed they were real. There was no indication that they repressions were done for cynical, self serving purposes. Stalin knew that purging the military would make the country more weak, but he feared conspiracies more. The conventional wisdom was that people were working with Trotsky, who was collaborating with Germany and Japan to overthrow the Soviet Union. After the civil war there were a number of Tsarists, fascists, and others who had indeed has some conspiracies. But the extent of this is unknown. And it wasn’t just Stalin that expressed these fears. The fears went all the way down to the factory worker level.Source: The Great Fear: Stalin’s Terror of the 1930s, by James HarrisThe issue of Stalin’s legacy and the Soviet Union is an interesting study in how we know what we know1. Historians are influenced by the cultural norms and bourgeois influences of society. History is also written by the victors.2. Propaganda has a cognitive framing effect. It creates associations between images and narratives that are false. But we see propaganda based narratives so much, and they are repeated by so many, they become the prevailing cognitive “frame” used when thinking about an issue.3. Goebbels talked about this in reference to propaganda. Edward Bernays was one of the leading advertising experts in the U.S. He used Freudian psychoanalysis to tap into the deepest and most basic subconscious desires and urges in people. Prior to this advertisers relied upon rationality to sell a product. When selling cars they would talk about the practicality of the car, the build quality, etc. After Bernays you would see a car commercial with someone driving fast, a beautiful woman in the car, and images related to status. You might see the person driving the BMW going to a cocktail party in a swanky part of the city while a valet drives the car away. Beautiful people await. All of these are appeals to subconscious desires, such as status, sex appeal, money and power. Bernays used these techniques to convince America to stop being isolationist and enter the WWI. Goebbels directed an enormous amount of energy creating propaganda against the Soviet Union and communism. After WWII the U.S. government hired former Nazis to work on “fighting communism” and creating propaganda against the Soviet Union. The U.S. even waived prosecution against them for war crimes in exchange for these services. The U.S. government also used its resources to demonize Stalin and communism. Operation Mockingbird was a CIA operation that brought in mainstream journalists to demonize the Soviet Union. This was only one of many anti-communist operations.4. The primary purpose of schooling is socialization. This means teaching students to value the things required to work in a modern industrial and office environment. The bells are like a work bell. Listening to the teacher and following directions is like following a line foreman. Being on time means arriving to work on time. Even lunch break is similar. Socialization also requires conformity. This means accepting the narrative espoused by the teacher in history.5. There were many primary source documents about actions done by Stalin and the USSR only just released within the last few decades. And many are still not released. The primary narrative about Stalin was written by Robert Conquest. Conquest was a rabid anti-communist. Due to a lack of historical records and the influence of Nazi propaganda from the Hearst publishing machine and others, there was significant “gap filling” used in writing his narrative. This was the “frame” for other historians to consider, including Applebaum. This narrative became so ingrained in the minds of people that others started repeating it, such as journalists and other writers. This narrative also happened to go along well with demonizing the Cold War enemy. The military industrial complex depended on the evils of communism to justify massive defense budgets. Presidents also wanted to use the Cold War and Soviet “aggression” to justify wars in Korea and Vietnam. Now that the Soviet Union is gone Russia was quickly replaced as the “bad guy” to justify the bloated military budget of the U.S. The real reason for the bloated military budget was economic—many representatives in Congress have military bases, production of armaments, or have constituents that join the military for jobs—thus the military industrial complex has become an essential part of the U.S. economy.6. The “Evil Empire” narrative of the Soviet Union and Stalin have become so ingrained that academics that look at new information and attempt to correct the historical record are labeled “Stalin apologists,” which they equate to being a Holocaust denier. Thus there is great peer pressure and risk of becoming a pariah due to scorn from others that don’t want to be associated with someone like that. Many scholars would rather just not bother with it.7. In the Soviet Union the oligarchs and elites benefit from the demonization of Stalin and the USSR because it is against their interest to have the Soviet Union resurrected. Marx taught that the social classes of different nations have more similarites in interests than do different nations. Proof of this is how the artistocracy in Europe would sometimes not even know the language of the nation they were governing, such as Catherine the Great, who had to learn Russian.8. In many respects Hitler and the Nazis did more to harm communism than anyone. By effectively using propaganda against communism it created the false “mainstream narrative” in the West that communism “Doesn’t work,” “killed 100 million people,” “starved and imprisoned millions,” and “always leads to mass death.” Attempts by historians to attack these lies using newly released primary sources is met with eye rolls, claims of being “The same as the Holocaust deniers.” It even becomes a form of moral judgment against the person stating the truth, “What kind of person denies such atrocities? Do you support mass murder?” Thus members of the left distance themselves from Lenin, Stalin, and the Soviet Union. And by cutting themselves off from the rich writings of Lenin and Stalin one loses an important source of real historical examples of the achievements of Marxism Leninism. A similar example would be if the Apostles were labeled as sex offenders and mass murderers. The de-Stalinization by Khrushchev in his “Secret Speech” had a devastating effect on the faith in the Soviet Union. In fact it was so devastating it was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. In fact during the Gorbachev period dissidents played a litany of anti-Stalin and anti-USSR propaganda on TV. It was this and the showing of the lives of rich American movie stars that led the people to lose their faith in the Soviet Union and socialism. Sadly, they would find out all too brutally what capitalism really meant—austerity, starvation, homelessness, massive inflation, and poverty. To this day Russia has not recovered. A recent poll showed that 60% of those living in the former Soviet Union said they miss it. Stalin has a 55% approval rating. Many now say that had they known what would happen they would have fought hard for the Soviet Union.The GulagIS THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO BY ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN AN ACCURATE DEPICTION OF WHAT THE SOVIET UNION WAS LIKE?No.His wife told the truth very clearly:A 2003 article regarding the death of Solzhenitsyn’s wife put it like this:“In her 1974 memoir, Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”…, she wrote that she was ”perplexed” that the West had accepted ”The Gulag Archipelago” as ”the solemn, ultimate truth,” saying its significance had been ”overestimated and wrongly appraised.”Pointing out that the book’s subtitle is ”An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” she said that her husband did not regard the work as ”historical research, or scientific research.”She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ”camp folklore,” containing ”raw material” which her husband was planning to use in his future productions.”The Gulag Archipelago shouldn’t be taken seriouslyFurther, Solzehenitsyn was a right wing radical and extremist.“But there's something else that makes him more complex than just a victim of tyranny and a crusader against it. Once in America and feted by Western leaders, he urged the US to continue bombing Vietnam. He condemned Amnesty International as too liberal, opposed democracy in Russia, and supported General Franco.”Mark Steel: A reactionary called SolzhenitsynThe other accounts of the gulags from letters written by prisoners depicts a whole different reality.“Well-known accounts of Stalin-era labor camps like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” and Gustaw Herling’s “A World Apart” imply, in their very titles, that detention sites were almost entirely cut off from the rest of Soviet society – islands divided from the country’s “mainland,” or underworlds into which prisoners disappeared, never to be heard from again.In fact, most Stalin-era labor camp inmates theoretically enjoyed at least some letter-writing privileges. Although rules varied depending on where and when a prisoner was held, often inmates could receive an unlimited amount of correspondence through the official camp mail system (though this was heavily censored).The amount they could send depended on the crime, with harsher limits for political offenders. In the 1940s, inmates sentenced for political crimes were often limited to sending only two to three letters home per year. But some political prisoners, like Formakov, managed to get around these constraints and send steady streams of letters through a mixture of official and illicit channels.”“In a separate series of letters, Formakov describes the stage shows he performed in as part of a camp cultural brigade. In a letter to his wife dated March 9, 1946, Formakov explained that the sunny attitudes the inmates who participated in these shows had to assume were often very much at odds with their reality:“We had a concert on the 8th in honor of International Women’s Day. I served as the emcee… You act as master of ceremonies, make some witty remarks, and then head backstage, release your soul, and you just want to wail… For this reason, I never let it go; my soul is always in a corset.”In addition to letters on standard lined notebook paper and mass-produced postcards, Formakov sent handmade birthday and Christmas cards. In one case, he carved a special anniversary greeting into birch bark for his wife. He wrote and illustrated short stories for his two children (Dima, five years old at the time of Formakov’s first arrest in July 1940, and Zhenia, born in December 1940). And he decorated the pages of some of the letters he sent with pressed wildflowers.”In letters from Stalin's labor camps, a window into Soviet political oppression“But his letters – both those sent through official channels and those smuggled out – capture many details that rarely figure in the memoirs of labor camp survivors. For instance, in a letter dated August 10, 1944, Formakov describes the surreal experience of going to the camp club to watch the 1941 American musical comedy “Sun Valley Serenade,” which had just been purchased by Soviet authorities and would have been a hot ticket in Moscow. Similarly, in a communication dated Oct. 27, 1947, he references rumors of an impending devaluation of the ruble, which suggests that – despite the Soviet state’s efforts to keep plans for a December 1947 currency reform secret – news had leaked, even to distant labor camps.Such passages support recent research by scholars Wilson Bell and Golfo Alexopolous, who have noted that labor camps were far more intertwined with the rest of Soviet society than previously thought.”Other accounts have also corroborated these facts.The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA““Humanitarian” lies serve to brainwash the population into supporting imperialist wars. Fed by far-right propaganda, and funded by the CIA, the mainstream “news” outlets describe the Soviet labour camps – also known as the “the Gulags” – as Stalin’s means to repress pro-democracy dissidents and to enslave the Soviet masses. However, the same CIA that, through Operation Mockingbird, gave the US military almost-total control over mainstream press in order to foster anti-Soviet disinformation (Tracy 2018), has recently released declassified documents that invalidate the slanders surrounding the Gulags.The CIA which conducted various anti-Soviet operations for almost five decades, and whose staff strived to obtain accurate intelligence about the USSR, cannot be said to have any bias in favor of the USSR. Therefore, the following declassified CIA files that surprisingly “confess” in favor of the Soviet Union are particularly valuable.”“The Conditions of the PrisonsA 1957 CIA document titled “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon “economic accountability” such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners’ food supplies.5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals.7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the “ordinary criminals” of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.The following are excerpts of the CIA document, underlined and put together for the reader:“According to page four of another CIA (1989) document titled “The Soviet Labour System: An Update,” the number of Gulag prisoners “grew to about 2 million” during Stalin’s time.These figures match Soviet statistics as well, from declassified Soviet achieves. The following is a 1954 declassified Soviet archival document (Pyakhov), an excerpt of which is translated into English:“During the period from 1921 to the present time for counterrevolutionary crimes were convicted 3,777,380 people, including to capital punishment – 642,980 people to the conent in the camps and prisons for a period of 25 years old and under – 2,369,220 into exile and expulsion – 765,190 people.“Of the total number of convicts, approximately convicted: 2,900,000 people – College of OGPU, NKVD and triples Special meeting and 877,000 people – courts by military tribunals, and Spetskollegiev Military Collegium.“It should be noted… that established by Decree … on November 3, 1934 Special Meeting of the NKVD which lasted until September 1, 1953 – 442,531 people were convicted, including to capital punishment – 10,101 people to prison – 360,921 people to exile and expulsion (within the country) – 57,539 people and other punishments (offset time in detention, deportation abroad, compulsory treatment) – 3,970 people…Attorney General R. RudenkoInterior Minister S. KruglovJustice Minister K. Gorshenin”The Soviet archives remained declassified for decades, only to be released near or after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition, after Stalin died, the pro-Stalin head of the NKVD (Soviet interior ministry) Lavrenty Beria had already been executed by Khrushchev, a staunch anti-Stalinist (History in an hour 2010). These facts make it very unlikely that the Soviet intelligence would have a pro-Stalin bias.The Italian-American historian Michael Parenti (1997, pp. 79-80) further analyzes the data provided from the Soviet archives:“In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. At about that time, there began a purge of the purgers, including many intelligence and secret police (NKVD) officials and members of the judiciary and other investigative committees, who were suddenly held responsible for the excesses of the terror despite their protestations of fidelity to the regime.“Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the Nazis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies…. [T]he great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as ‘the largest system of death camps in modern history’.“Almost a million gulag prisoners were released during World War II to serve in the military. The archives reveal that more than half of all gulag deaths for the 1934-53 period occurred during the war years (1941-45), mostly from malnutrition, when severe privation was the common lot of the entire Soviet population. (Some 22 million Soviet citizens perished in the war.) In 1944, for instance, the labor-camp death rate was 92 per 1000. By 1953, with the postwar recovery, camp deaths had declined to 3 per 1000.“Should all gulag inmates be considered innocent victims of Red repression? Contrary to what we have been led to believe, those arrested for political crimes (‘counterrevolutionary offenses’) numbered from 12 to 33 percent of the prison population, varying from year to year. The vast majority of inmates were charged with nonpolitical offenses: murder, assault, theft, banditry, smuggling, swindling, and other violations punishable in any society.”Thus, according to the CIA, approximately two million people were sent to the Gulag in the 1930s, whereas according to declassified Soviet archives, 2,369,220 up until 1954. When compared to the population of the USSR at the time, as well as the statistics of a country like the United States, the Gulag percent population in the USSR throughout its history was lower than that of the United States today or since the 1990s. In fact, based on Sousa’s (1998)research, there was a larger percentage of prisoners (relative to the whole population) in the US, than there ever was in the USSR:“In a rather small news item appearing in the newspapers of August 1997, the FLT-AP news agency reported that in the US there had never previously been so many people in the prison system as the 5.5 million held in 1996. This represents an increase of 200,000 people since 1995 and means that the number of criminals in the US equals 2.8% of the adult population. These data are available to all those who are part of the North American department of justice…. The number of convicts in the US today is 3 million higher than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union! In the Soviet Union, there was a maximum of 2.4% of the adult population in prison for their crimes – in the US the figure is 2.8% and rising! According to a press release put out by the US department of justice on 18 January 1998, the number of convicts in the US in 1997 rose by 96,100.”ConclusionSeeing the USSR as a major ideological challenge, the Western imperial bourgeoisie demonized Stalin and the Soviet Union. Yet after decades of propaganda, declassified archives from both the US and USSR together debunk these anti-Soviet slanders. Worth our attention is the fact that the CIA – a fiercely anti-Soviet source – has published declassified documents debunking the very anti-Soviet myths it promoted and continues to promote in the mainstream media. Together with declassified Soviet archives, the CIA files have demonstrated that the bourgeois press has lied about the Gulags.Notes13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery. (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2018, from 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of SlaveryCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA). (1989). THE SOVIET FORCED LABOR SYSTEM: AN UPDATE (GI-M 87-20081). Retrieved February 12, 2018, http://fromhttps://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000500615.pdfCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA). (2010, February 22). 1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955. Retrieved January 5, 2018, from https://www.cia.gov/library/read...Hillary and Bill used ‘slave labour’. (2017, June 08). Retrieved June 10, 2017, from Hillary and Bill used ‘slave labour’Игорь, П. (n.d.). Книга: За что сажали при Сталине. Невинны ли «жертвы репрессий»? Retrieved August 28, 2018, from Книга: За что сажали при Сталине. Невинны ли "жертвы репрессий"?Parenti, M. (1997). Blackshirts and reds: Rational fascism and the overthrow of communism. San Francisco, Calif: City Lights Books.Sousa, M. (1998, June 15). Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union. Retrieved August 27, 2018, from Lies concerning the history of the Soviet UnionThe Death of Lavrenty Beria. (2015, December 23). Retrieved August 31, 2018, from http://www.historyinanhour.com/2...Tracy, J. F. (2018, January 30). The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know. Retrieved August 28, 2018, http://fromhttps://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/5471956 “Source: The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIAKenneth Neil Cameron in his short biography on Stalin:"[Stalin's role in the war] was recognized by the Soviet people, and by the end of the war he was regarded as the savior of the nation.The record shows that the tribute was well deserved. Had Stalin not won the fight for industrialization and defeated the Trotskyists and Bukharinites, the USSR would have become a Nazi province. Had he not had the foresight to build a metallurgical industry in the Urals, the Red Armies could not have been supplied with arms. Had he not industrialized the economy and introduced mechanized farming, he would have had neither a base for producing arms nor a mass of soldiers trained in the operation of machinery. Had he not signed a nonaggression treaty with Germany, the USSR might have been attacked 22 months sooner. Had he not moved the Soviet armies into Poland, the German attack would have begun even closer to Moscow. Had he not subdued General Mannerheim's Finland, Leningrad would have fallen. Had he not ordered the transfer of 1,400 factories from the west to the east, the most massive movement of its kind in history, Russian industry would have received a possibly fatal blow. Had he not built up the army and equipped it with modern arms, it would have been destroyed on the frontiers.He did not, of course, do these things alone. They were Party decisions and Party actions, and behind the Party throughout was the power, courage, and intelligence of the working class. But Stalin stood at all times as the central, individual directing force, his magnificent courage and calm foresight inspiring the whole nation."From Stalin: Man of Contradiction, pg. 107 (1987)Alexander Finnegan's answer to What if the devil met Stalin?Was Joseph Stalin a bad person?Growing up I was terrified of my father. He had a terrible temper. Whenever I heard the sound of footsteps I knew that pain wouldn’t be far behind. My heart would race. I just had to be strong and take it. If I cried he made it worse.“I’ll give you something to cry about” he would say, the smell of alcohol on his breath.I developed smallpox. It scarred my cheeks badly.“Hey Pock Pock” the kids at school would say, mocking me. I hated them, but if I cried it made it worse. I had to be strong like I was dealing with my father. I learned that crying won’t get you anywhere. You have to be strong, like steel.I was very devout. My mother entered me into the seminary where I studied theology. I went to every mass and devotion. It was quiet there, peaceful.One day I came across the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx in a bookstore near the cafe. I had never seen anything like that. He managed to perfectly capture the injustice I saw in this world. He offered scientific answers as to why capitalism was exploiting people. On Friday afternoons I used to go for a walk through the city. The aristocrats would ride by in their carriages, the women dressed up so fancily. Not long after the workers would pass by, their clothes tattered, dirt on their faces, weary. They used to spend most of their money at the bar after work. Kind of like my father did. He was unhappy too. He hated his job.“Why do some do so well while others suffer?” Marx offered explanations that made sense. I spent my free time reading more and more. I started talking with the other seminarians about Marxism. Some were interested, but many were against it. One of them turned me in. He was extremely conservative.I was summoned.“Our kingdom is not of this earth” the formation director said to me. I told him about the ideas of Marx, and that there is hope for something now, in this world. After a meeting with the other supervising priests I was dismissed for passing out Marxist literature.Fast forward a few years…The desire to make change didn’t go away. It had become a spiritual matter for me to stop the exploitation, alienation and oppression of capitalism. If others couldn’t do it, I was going to damn well try. I joined an upstart group of other Marxists called the Bolsheviks. I met Trotsky and Lenin. Trotsky was a genius, and also very eccentric. He believed in free love, communal living, communal raising of children, and he was an atheist. He wrote extensively and was extremely energetic. Lenin had a near religious devotion to Marx. He had so much charisma. People were inspired just listening to him. He believed that with the right people, with those willing to do what it takes, he could overthrow the Tsar and institute a Marxist society.1924The multiple gunshots Lenin suffered from assassins took everything out of him. There were times when he looked half dead from exhaustion. But he kept pushing himself, afraid everything would fall apart without him. I could tell, as could others, that his health was declining. It also became clear that someone would have to assume his position. Trotsky naturally wanted it. I think he expected it. Some expected him too, while others thought it should be me. I wasn’t the public speaker that Trotsky was. But I am far more practical, especially in administrative matters.We all knew that socialism could never be safe so long as there were even one capitalist nation on earth. The Paris Commune taught us that. The imperialists would stop at nothing. But Trotsky sometimes didn’t know when to slow down. He wanted worldwide revolution, all the time. That wasn’t the right way to do it. You have to strengthen the home front before you engage in never ending war. When Lenin’s time came I feared it was going to get ugly. Trotsky wasn’t going to happily go away if he didn’t run the whole show.circa 1930Germany hasn’t turned out well. The Nazis are growing in power. They have hypnotized the nation. Judging by the speeches Hitler is giving it won’t be long before there is another war. In Mein Kampf Hitler laid out very clearly his hatred for Jews and communists. He calls them “JudeoBolsheviks.” We are 50–100 years behind the West in industrialization. Russian troops were slaughtered in WWI. We have no tanks, no planes, nothing. We have 5–10 years to prepare by industrializing or they will smash us.I ordered a 5 Year Plan to industrialize. It became clear that the only way we were going to be able to feed those in the cities after moving them from the farms was to collectivize and update the farming techniques. I convinced many members of the party but some are unconvinced. After the announcement of the collectivization the kulaks went crazy. They slaughtered half the livestock needed to farm. Some killed the families of government officials. They encouraged the farmers to grow less food.“They wanna take 30% for the cities, we’ll grow 30% less,” they chanted.Clearly they weren’t math majors. Many were hiding grain to speculate on the prices, hoping requisition fees would go up. People in the cities are going to starve and these people don’t give a damn. I ordered the soldiers to assist the turning over of the grain. I had to have them removed or everybody would have starved. The Western media is calling this genocide. Genocide would have been if I just had all of them shot, but I didn’t.To make things worse there was a famine in the Ukraine from drought, sabotage, an increase in the birth rate, and more people in the cities not farming. Goebbels told Hearst, the newspaper publisher in America that I caused the famine intentionally. They even used recycled photos from earlier famines to really play it up. I ordered everyone in the nation to be on rations until the famine subsided. They brought me a copy of the newspaper. Goebbels has only the best working with him. And Hearst might as well have a swastika tattooed on his arm. They have a contract together to publish pro Nazi fake news.Some criticized me for collectivizing. But after the famine I was proven right. But tales of me and the “Holodomor” never went away.Circa 1937I received word that Trotsky had been collaborating with the Japanese and the Germans to overthrow me. Trotskyites, Tsarists, and social democrats have been conspiring. Even some members of the military are in on it. I had their phones bugged, and my spies have confirmed it. A few years prior we ran an undercover operation called Operation Trust. We discovered a vast array of conspiracies, spies, double agents, and plots seeking to overthrow the government. It filled 37 volumes! Later we would discover even more disturbing news. What hurt the worst was that Tukhachevsky and Bukharin were in on it! Who can you trust? I have already had attempts on my life. Why should it be different for me than Lenin? He took three bullets. The Americans are wanting us destroyed too. We have had sanctions for years. They won’t accept gold, only grain for payment. They want us to starve. Even during the famine they would take no less than grain. I lock my room at night. Nobody is permitted to enter. The American media said I was “paranoid.” How can you be paranoid when you have had attempts on your life? You can’t win with anybody. You have to remain strong, because you are fundamentally alone. I have terrible dreams.It became clear that there was a cancer in the party. And if not cut out it would destroy the whole body of state. I ordered a purge to root out the conspirators. Trotsky fled. I put the top officials on trial. The evidence was clear. Most confessed publicly. We had journalists from America there too. They admitted to conspiring to overthrow the government, do away with the collectivization of agriculture, reinstate the NEP and the let the kulaks and private property be, and roll back the gains we made for the people. The problem is that there was no going back. The Germans were going to attack. We weren’t growing enough food to feed those industrializing the nation in the cities. But without that we wouldn’t have the tanks, planes, guns and other arms we need to fight the Germans. The Lend Lease from the Americans can only go so far. Losing was not an option. Losing meant extermination at the hands of the Germans. Bukharin said he felt sorry for the kulaks having been moved. But how sorry would he feel when the Germans brought worse atrocities? You have to be strong. You can’t let emotion get in the way. Nazis don’t care about compassion. It is just like when I knew my father was coming up the stairs. Crying only made it worse. You just have to face it, no matter how hard it was going to be. Meanwhile the purges started to take on a life of their own at the lower levels. Some made false accusations as to be spiteful. I issued an order to reign it in. The process was ugly, but there was no other choice. It was a horrible time. People don’t know what it is like to live during these times of crisis. You have to make very tough choices. FDR has had to do the same thing. All leaders do.Most of the purges involved firings. The more serious offenders were sent to the gulag. The West doesn’t have anything like them. They are work camps. Men and women are together. They aren’t cells. People move around, go to movies, can write letters, go to cultural events, and do other things. But they are expected to work hard. During the war we were low on food so everyone had rations. The older and sicker people didn’t hold up well. There have been outbreaks of typhoid. Most people admitted go home. They are paid for their work, and the workday is 8–10 hours per day. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these Tsarists didn’t write a bunch of lies about his experience to garner support from the West. They would probably even give him a Nobel Prize in literature!Sometimes the weight of carrying all this feels like it is too much. I have even resigned several times. But the people won’t let me. I don’t know what is going to happen after I am gone. I need to implement some way to weed out corruption, greed, and stagnation. It has to be a meritocracy and remain ideologically sound. If not the Soviet Union will fall. I see so much incompetence, weakness, and dishonesty around me. The future depends on our future leaders. All it takes is even one leader not up to the task, someone foolish and easily wooed by approval from the West. Someone who trusts too much. Capitalists can never be trusted.People think I have no feelings. They think it is easy, or that I have god like control over everything. I am not a dictator. I have to work with the Politburo too. I feel like the only adult in the room. Somebody has to be a steady hand at the ship of state. The only one who really understood was FDR. Churchill is a sop. Given the number of fascists in the Eastern Bloc I worked out a deal to bring them in to the Soviet Union at Yalta. I can’t leave fascist governments in control at the border. We would never be safe like that. We can’t let Germany reunite, either. Germans are too aggressive. They are better off split up. In fact I had to work very hard to keep the spies and operatives out. Truman told me about the A bomb at Potsdam and used it just to prove the point.I try to enjoy the little things—a glass of Georgian fruit wine, a good cigar, or spending time with family. For my birthday they wanted to read one of my old poems that I wrote in my youth, but I was too embarrassed. It feels like those days were so long ago.Somebody asked me what would happen if the Soviet Union was destroyed.“There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries. The working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost,” I said.I pray that day never comes.I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.— Ioseb Besarionis dze JughashviliSourcesContents Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martenshttps://mltheory.files.wordpress... Kruschev Lied by Grover FurrS-300 in Syria – a preliminary assessment...Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on HolodomorOrigins of the Great PurgesNew Study Supports Idea Stalin Was PoisonedLet’s Be Honest – Stalin Was Less of a Criminal Than Churchill, Truman, and LBJWhy doesn’t the Soviet Union exist any more? Part 5: Perestroika and glasnost - Invent the Futurenumber of gulag.pdfSolzehnitsyn Lied pdf.pdfLeft Anticommunism: The Unkindest Cuthttps://msuweb.montclair.edu/~fu...Did the Soviet Union Invade Poland in September 1939?The Holodomor Hoax: Joseph Stalin’s Crime That Never Took PlaceAlexander Finnegan's answer to How much of Stalin's paranoia was based on actual assassination plots?Alexander Finnegan's answer to How true is the claim that most Cold War propaganda about the Soviet Union is regurgitated directly from Nazi propaganda?Alexander Finnegan's answer to Did Stalin really kill 60 million people?Alexander Finnegan's answer to What is the most insane fact about the present that would be nearly impossible to describe to someone in from the past?https://www.quora.com/share/Why-has-history-forgotten-that-Stalin-had-signed-a-peace-pact-agreement-with-Hitler-to-invade-Poland-after-Germany-did-meaning-Stalin-was-a-willing-Axis-member-until-Hitler-attacked-the-Soviet-Union-1?ch=10&share=63d3b959Alexander Finnegan's answer to What are the least known facts about Communist Russia?

First, the premise of the question seems to imply that there was a single greatest decade where we reached a peak, from which we have declined. I’m not sure I agree with that.As far as a single decade where we accomplished the most good, I would vote for the 1940s. Here are results for individual decades, as I understand them:1780–1790: We ratified the Constitution and elected Washington President. But it was also the decade of Shay’s Rebellion and opportunists buying up Revolutionary War debts at pennies on the dollar, to wreak financial havoc later. These two developments indicated the constant struggle between financial elites and the common man that would persist through our history.1790–1800: We saw a democratic transition of power, as Washington declined to run for a third term. But it was also the decade of the Whiskey Rebellion and the Alien and Sedition Acts.1800–1810: One of our most intelligent Chief Executives, Thomas Jefferson, was President, completing the Louisiana Purchase and dispatching the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Three of the most important Supreme Court decisions were handed down: Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Dartmouth v. Woodward. But Jefferson also imposed a disastrous embargo and put his own former Vice President on trial for “constructive treason,” a dubious legal doctrine that John Marshall decisively quashed in Richmond.1810–1820: This decade included Victory in the War of 1812, the opening of the Erie Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Era of Good Feeling, but the British marched into Washington DC itself and burned the Capitol and the White House.1820–1830: This decade saw the election of the first true President of the “common man.” But that same figure, Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, brutally mistreated Native Americans.1830–1840: New states were established west of the Mississippi, Jackson faced down Calhoun in the Nullification Crisis, and Webster decisively affirmed the doctrine of “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,” in his debate with Hayne. This was the only time in our history that the budget was completely in balance. William Lloyd Garrison established The Liberator to advocate for abolition. Still, Jackson petulantly refused to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, leading to the Panic of 1837, and ill-advised incursions into Mexican territory led to the massacre at the Alamo. An anti-slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was killed by a pro-slavery mob.1840–1850: Gold was discovered in California, but we also fought the Mexican War, a blatant move to extend slave territory. Nativist political parties arose, the Know-Nothings and the Anti-Masonic party. Persecution of Mormons resulted in the murder of their founder, Joseph Smith, at the hands of a mob.1850–1860: We sought better relations with Canada and entered on relations with Japan, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, the party of Lincoln was founded in Ripon, and Lincoln and Douglas held their memorable debates, but our last President to hold slaves in office, Zachary Taylor, was followed by two decidedly mediocre Presidents, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, followed by one of the worst Presidents in history, James Buchanan, whose dithering led to the Civil War. Pro- and anti-slavery settlers took bloody revenge on each other in Kansas, and John Brown was hanged after his raid on Harper’s Ferry.1860–1870: I would vote for this decade second after the 1940s. This was the decade of the Gettsyburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; Union victory in the Civil War established once and for all that the United States was not a mere conditional federation from which a state could withdraw, and the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. We purchased Alaska from Russia. But one of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was struck down, and Lincoln was followed by one of the most inept Presidents in history, Andrew Johnson. We lost 529,000 men in the Civil War.1870–1880: The Freedmen’s Bureau worked to educate freed slaves, and freedmen such as Hiram Rhodes Revels served in state government for the first time. An American invented the telephone, and we celebrated our centennial. But the Administration of Grant was one of the most corrupt in history, involving Grant’s own Vice President, Schuyler Colfax, in the Credit Mobilier scandal, despite Grant’s personal honesty. Irresponsible underwriting of railroad bonds led to the Panic of 1873, and Republican President Rutherford Hayes used federal troops to suppress labor strikes. The Republican victory of 1876 was blatantly stolen from the real winner, Democratic lawyer Samuel Tilden, and the Republicans secured their victory through a corrupt bargain with Southern die-hards, agreeing to withdraw Union troops and cancel Reconstruction in return for Southern Support. The Ku Klux Klan was founded, and we pursued brutal wars against Native Americans.1880–1890: President Chester Arthur began to modernize the Navy to steel-hulled ships and began to reform the Civil Service. Secretary of State James J. Blaine sought to establish good relations with Latin America and helped found the Organization of American States. But Blaine himself was disgraced by corruption, and an unbalanced disappointed office seeker struck down President James A. Garfield in a Washington train station. In Chicago, a political rally that ended with a bomb being thrown resulted in the trial and hanging of seven political agitators who probably had nothing to do with the bomb.1890–1900: We celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyages with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, featuring the largest peacetime gathering in American history, the Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law, a populist movement led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey mounted a march on Washington, William Jennings Bryan began a populist movement at the Chicago Democratic convention of 1896, and Herman Hollerith invented a tabulating machine, an ancestor of the computer, to count the national census. But the decade also saw another financial panic, an unnecessary war with Spain, and the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing legal segregation. A wave of unspeakably barbaric race-based lynching swept the United States, prompting a bitter Mark Twain to compose his essay “The United States of Lyncherdom.” Americans overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii and deposed its last queen.1900–1910: We built the Panama Canal, the Wright brothers began manned flight, and President Teddy Roosevelt became the first President to win a Nobel Peace Prize, for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese War. But another President was assassinated in 1901, we suppressed an indigenous independence movement in the Philippines, waterboarding insurgents, and when Teddy Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington as his dinner guest at the White House, Southern newspapers said Roosevelt had turned the White House into a “coon café,” and one South Carolina editor said whites would have to “shoot ten thousand of those n___s to teach them their place.” A panic in 1907 was resolved only because J.P. Morgan corralled bankers and forced them to underwrite loans to support the nation’s faltering finances.1910–1920: The Federal Reserve was founded and the 19th Amendment gave women the vote; Woodrow, Wilson, the only President in history to hold a Ph.D., was elected; the United States joined European Allies to win World War I, and Wilson proposed a League of Nations to promote world peace. Wilson also appointed Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court as the first Jewish justice. But Wilson, a Southern racist, endorsed D.W. Griffith’s cartoonishly racist film The Birth of a Nation, ordered civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter out of the Oval Office, and let cabinet members hound blacks out of the Civil Service. A Georgia minister started the Klan once more, which had died out decades before. European crowds shouted their adoration of President Wilson when he went to the Peace Conference of Versailles, but his peace proposals were dead on arrival in the Republican Congress, led by bitter opposition from Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. A 29-year-old Southeast Asian patriot, Ho Chi Minh, came to Paris to hand Wilson a letter asking for liberation of Vietnam from the French, but Wilson probably never saw it. Wilson himself, incapacitated by a stroke, did not even meet with his own Cabinet for 6 months, while his wife and his private secretary ran the government of the United States. Wilson still hoped for a third term and was bitterly disappointed when the Democratic convention of 1920 did not nominate him by acclamation, even though he could no longer even compose a thousand-word article for a law journal. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, concerned about “Red agitators,” directed the FBI to carry out intrusive raids of suspected dissidents, violating civil rights. An influenza epidemic in 1919, with contagion exacerbated by gatherings to celebrate the end of World War I, killed scores of thousands in the United States.1920–1930: An American author, Sinclair Lewis, was the first American to receive a Nobel Prize for literature, and Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. The stock market and general prosperity reached unprecedented heights, and the President addressed the nation by radio for the first time. A young Democratic politician, Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to national attention for the first time. On the other hand, Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents in history, with his administration plagued by the Teapot Dome scandal concerning oil leases; 53-year-old Harding fathered an illegitimate child by his 23-year-old lover, Nan Britton, and after Harding’s death, photos were discovered of him posing with nude 16-year-old farm girls. The sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited, leading to the rise of criminal syndicates, and the Democratic party in 1924 split over its inability to take a definite position on the role of the Klan in politics. A high school science teacher, John Scopes, was put on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution to his students. The stock market crashed in 1929 and led to the Great Depression, while our President, Herbert Hoover, insisted that business conditions were just fine and that people simply needed to have confidence.1930–1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for the first two of four Presidential terms and began ambitious federal programs under the heading of “The New Deal” attempt to bring America out of the Great Depression. Prohibition was repealed, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was established, with a chain of hydroelectric dams to relieve flooding and provide power to rural areas. President Roosevelt named the first African-American Army General, Benjamin O. Davis. But the Depression persisted, and at its height, national unemployment probably reached around 25%. The United States turned away a ship full of Jewish refugees from the Third Reich and would not approve visas for the family of Anne Frank. In 1932, an encampment of embittered World War I soldiers in Washington, DC, insisting on being paid bonuses promised by Congress 14 years before, was violently dispersed by troops under Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, acting reluctantly under the orders of General Douglas MacArthur. As the soldiers and their families fled bullets and tear gas, MacArthur commented, “Thank God this country still knows how to handle a mob.”1940–1950: Thomas Dewey of New York successfully prosecuted mobsters, leading to the execution of Louis Lepke Buchalter and the deportation of Lucky Luciano. Entering World War II on the side of the Allies, the United States helped defeat Hitler. The war with Japan was brought to a successful conclusion, and the United Nations was founded. Despite President Roosevelt’s sudden death just before the end of the war, his Vice-President, Harry Truman, the last President who never attended college, took over and retained most of Roosevelt’s capable advisors. General George C. Marshall formulated the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe, saved starving thousands, and probably kept some countries from being drawn into the Communist orbit. Truman integrated the U.S. military. Television became commercially viable, and the Ed Sullivan show began. The government passed the GI bill, financing college educations for veterans. On the other hand, nuclear weapons were used in war for the first time in history, causing unspeakable suffering. Distrust between the U.S. and its former Soviet allies led to the “Iron Curtain” separating Warsaw Pact nations from the West, while Truman felt compelled to enunciate the Truman Doctrine, outlining a plan to contain the Soviets. In formulating the American response to the new state of Israel, Truman declined to push for a two-state solution, even though this approach was favored by George Marshall. A severe housing shortage left returned veterans and their families living in cardboard boxes.1950–1960: Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of command in Korea, reaffirming the principle of civilian control of the military. A United States delegation met with a Soviet delegation in Geneva. The Supreme Court reversed its earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision with its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, striking down the principle of “separate but equal” facilities for the races. President Eisenhower ordered the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas public schools and sent federal troops to enforce it. Congress passed a bill to construct the interstate highway system. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee convened a commission to investigate organized crime. The polio vaccine was introduced. William Faulkner became the third American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Popular TV shows such as Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best portrayed the United States as a land of attractive suburbs, full of polite, well-dressed middle class people. On the other hand, the Korean War entered a stalemate that persists today. The CIA deposed a democratically elected head of state in Iran. Russia detonated a hydrogen bomb and went into space before we did. The death of Emmett Till in Mississippi highlighted continuing mistreatment of blacks by whites. A popular TV show was Amos and Andy, featuring blacks acting like buffoons. The House Un-American Activities Committee forced Hollywood actors, directors, and writers to name associates who might be “communist sympathizers” on pain of being hounded out of the industry if they refused. In the Senate, a red-baiting demagogue, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, held televised hearings purporting to prove that the State Department was “filled with Communist agents.”1960–1970: John F. Kennedy was elected President, inaugurating the “Camelot” era in which the White House seemed to be the headquarters of a new era of hope, energy, optimism, and cultural sophistication. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, marshaled Congressional forces to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; following the example of his idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Johnson advocated for a “Great Society” in which poverty would be eliminated. James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy declared that we would go to the Moon, and that happened, in 1969. A youth-oriented movement stressing greater personal freedom culminated in such events as the Woodstock Festival in 1969. The Supreme Court ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright established the principle of a right to legal counsel even if a defendant could not afford it; Griswold v. Connecticut strengthened personal privacy rights; Miranda v. Arizona stipulated that arrestees must be read their rights, and Loving v. Virginia helped to legalize interracial marriage. On television, Bill Cosby, as a United States government agent, and Diahann Carroll, as a nurse, presented blacks as worthy of respect, as opposed to the clownish stereotype of Amos and Andy, which went off the air. The first black Supreme Court justice was appointed.On the other hand, we imposed an embargo on Cuba, nearly went to war with the Soviets over their plan to put missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States, and became involved in the quagmire of Vietnam. Civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi and Alabama, and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers were assassinated. President John F. Kennedy and later, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated. President Kennedy had endless sexual liaisons in the White House on which the press remained silent and pursued an affair with a woman, Judith Campbell Exner, who was simultaneously the mistress of a Chicago mobster, Sam Giancana. Race riots broke out in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark. Chicago was rocked by riots in 1968 as students and other protested the Vietnam War during the Democratic convention. The nation was shocked by violent crimes, including a mass shooting from atop a tower on a Texas college campus by Charles Whitman, the slaughter of a group of student nurses in Chicago, by Richard Speck, and the slaughter of a pregnant actress and her friends in a Beverly Hills house by cult leader Charles Manson and his followers.1970–1980: Richard Nixon became the first President to visit China and opened diplomatic relations with a Communist nation we had previously shunned. The United States sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union with Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, exposing the misconduct of the Vietnam War and later broke the story of Watergate, becoming a national paper in the process. The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade established the principle of a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. The first reality documentary, An American Family, was broadcast in 1973. The last execution for some years was carried out in Utah in 1976. The Concorde, a supersonic passenger jet, began operation. Limited cable TV programming began, and ATMs were invented, as were the first home game consoles, precursors of the personal computer. President Gerald Ford, a man of great personal decency, pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in the hope of avoiding years of political and legal wrangling and national bitterness. His wife, Betty, openly acknowledged her previous rehab treatment and, later, her breast cancer. The United States withdrew from Vietnam. The election of Jimmy Carter, former Governor of Georgia, seemed to promise an era of hope and personal decency.On the other hand, Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam in an attempt to win the war. Our retreat from Vietnam, in 1975, was seen by many as ignominious and led to years of acrimony among Americans. The 1979 films Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter symbolized the deep American ambivalence about the war. National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio fired on student demonstrators, killing one. Nixon obstructed justice by covering up the Watergate break-in and then fired the special prosecutor assigned to investigate him. He finally resigned to avoid impeachment. His successor, Ford, let himself be advised by such men as Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and Henry Kissinger in the State Department. The Carter administration could not work well with the Democratic Congress, and the national economy suffered high inflation. The country suffered from what Carter called “the national malaise,” and Carter dismissed most of his Cabinet. Carter served just one term, in part because he was seen as weak in the wake of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the 444-day captivity of Americans by Iranian radicals. Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, VA began the “Moral Majority Movement,” the foundation of the religious right.1980–1990: The IBM PC was marketed in 1981, and the first cell phone call was made in 1983. The Apple Macintosh, with its icon-based graphical user interface, also dates from the early 1980s. President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet Premier Gorbachev, urged him to tear down the Berlin Wall, and advocated for peace between the two countries (although Gorbachev appears to have been inclined toward peace in part because he thought the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” was real and operational, which it wasn’t). Reagan bombed Libya, which seems to have made Qadafi decide to give up his own attempt to develop nukes, though he took revenge for the bombing two years later with the Lockerbie bombing. The U.S. economy improved from the doldrums of the 1970s. The Soviet Union basically collapsed around 1989, which some commentators heralded as “the end of history” (since events were no longer determined by a seemingly endless conflict between two lethally armed super powers).On the other hand, violent crime continued to shock us. Reagan was shot in March, 1981, and the Pope two months later, though both recovered. John Lennon had been shot to death in 1980. AIDS entered the national consciousness for the first time, and no one knew what it was or what to do about it. Reagan was seen by many as mismanaging the economy, getting Congress to enact large tax cuts without corresponding reductions in spending. He was criticized for his handling of an air traffic controller’s strike. His administration was nearly brought down when it was discovered that a Marine Lieutenant Colonel, Oliver North, was running an operation out of the White House itself, apparently without Reagan’s knowledge, to illegally sell arms to Iran, our enemies, to raise money to finance Central American paramilitary death squads, called “Contras.” We invaded the Caribbean Island of Grenada. Democratic attempts to win the White House, with Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and Michael Dukakis in 1988, were seen as ignominious failures. In the 1988 GOP primary in New Hampshire, the eventual nominee, George H.W. Bush, was defeated by a TV preacher, Pat Robertson. When Bush eventually got the nomination, he chose for his running mate a shallow young lawyer, Dan Quayle, given to saying things like “A mind is a terrible thing to lose” and “I was not born in this century” (he was about 35). Quayle also “corrected” a student in a spelling bee to the wrong spelling of “potato.” Meanwhile, there were notable scandals of supposed child sex abuse rings in day care centers, which were shown to be non-existent. A New York real estate tycoon, Donald Trump, published The Art of the Deal. The attempts of the American government to aid Afghan muhajideen fighters against the Soviet occupation contributed to the eventual formation of Al Qaeda.1990–2000: Bill Clinton, only the second President born after 1911, who had met President Nixon as a teenager, was elected and sought to move Democratic politics in a more centrist direction. His wife, Hillary, herself a lawyer, sought to enhance the role of First Lady to be more of an integral player on the President’s team, sponsoring healthcare reform.On the other hand, Bill was seen by many on the left as a sort of cynical sellout for political gain, and his welfare reform program as uncaring. He approved the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded man who may not have been capable of understanding the charges against him, as proof of his commitment to law and order. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to erase what many saw as necessary boundaries between consumer banking and investment banking. He supported the “Defense of Marriage” Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, for which he later apologized, and also supported “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” a measure to allow gays to serve in the military in secret. The image of the military was tarnished by the Tailhook scandal, an incident of unrestrained groping of female service members at a gathering of officers. Hillary’s attempt at healthcare reform went down to ignominious defeat, and the GOP recaptured Congress in 1994, leading to Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and, later, a government shutdown. Bill, a notorious womanizer, was later found to have had an affair with a White House intern, and articles of impeachment were filed in the House accusing him of obstruction of justice. He and Hillary were continually hounded by allegations of shady dealings in the Whitewater real estate deal, as well as the supposed murder of a political operative, Vince Foster. Clinton was impeached in the House, though not removed from office by the Senate.2000–2010: George W. Bush, a former Governor of Texas and son of the 41st President, was elected on a program of “compassionate conservatism,” promising to be “a uniter, not a divider.” After the United States was attacked by Muslim fanatics on 9/11, Bush appeared in a Washington, DC mosque and said “The face of terrorism is not the true face of Islam. Islam is peace.” The United States captured Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator, tried him and hanged him in 2004. Bush was succeeded by our first African-American President, Barack Obama, a Harvard Law graduate who, as an unknown Illinois State Senator, had given the opening address at the 2004 Democratic convention, electrifying the nation with his assertion that we need not be divided as a nation but could simply be “Americans.” Veteran civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who had sought the Democratic nomination in 1984, wept for joy the night Obama was elected. Obama got Congress to pass a bailout program for a disastrously weakened economy, leading to one of the longest peacetime expansions of the economy in history. Later, he got Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, providing health insurance to millions who had previously been without coverage. Obama also persuaded Congress to bail out the distressed American automobile industry, which would have cost the country thousands of jobs had it collapsed altogether. In 2011, Obama authorized a special Navy SEAL mission that killed Osama Bin Laden.On the other hand, Bush’s 2000 election was seen as stolen, since it was clear that his opponent, Al Gore, had won the popular vote. The outcome came down to a recount in Florida, which the Supreme Court stopped. Bush dismissed a Presidential intelligence briefing that warned that Al Quaeda would attack the United States with airplanes and then became obsessed with the idea that Saddam Hussein had conspired with Osama Bin Laden, which was not true, any more than the questionable intelligence asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (it is possible that Saddam may have had programs at one time to develop WMD and that his own scientists were afraid to tell him that the programs had been discontinued, but in any case, the so-called intelligence that there were currently WMD was very questionable). A botched hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan allowed him to escape. Bush’s Administration persuaded itself, groundlessly, that the Iraqis would welcome us and that their oil would pay for the invasion. Later, American soldiers were found to have tortured and abused prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib facility, while others were sent to Guantanamo. Domestically, Bush tried to partially privatize Social Security under the aegis of the “Ownership Society,” while cooperating with credit card companies to limit consumer bankruptcy relief from credit card debt and with drug companies to pass the absurdly expensive Medicare Part D, a misconceived prescription drug benefit for seniors. In foreign policy, Bush persuaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia that they might be offered NATO membership and then sat on his hands when an aggressive Russia started a war with Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. In his personal style, Bush was a dolt, given to malapropisms such as “The terrorists want to hurt our country, and so do we” and “It’s time for mankind to enter the Solar System.” Bush made a fool of himself by walking onto the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” as occupied Iraq was actually descending into chaos. While New Orleans was being flooded by Katrina, Bush endorsed the comically inept head of FEMA, Michael Brown, saying “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.”Obama’s election was seen as a startling sign of racial progress in our country, but Congressional Republican leadership under Mitch McConnell announced at once that they would oppose everything he stood for and pursue the goal of making him a one-term President, after which Obama was blamed by whites for failing to meet Congress halfway. Donald Trump, a failed businessman and reality TV star, became even more prominent by promoting the idea that Obama had not actually been born in the United States and was ineligible for the Presidency. Obama himself is a very intelligent man who seemed to confuse promise with performance and left office faintly puzzled that the world did not share his warm self-regard. Having accepted the Presidency of the Harvard Law Review without authoring a single article, having published two memoirs and accepted a Nobel Peace Prize without ever having actually accomplished anything to that point, Obama outsourced his “signature achievement,” healthcare reform, to Nancy Pelosi and let Congress draft it in a way that when it was later defended before the Supreme Court, the Administration’s argument that it was a tax contradicted the very language of the statute itself; he promised the public that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” and, when the web site to sign up for healthcare turned out to be non-operational, professed himself as surprised as anyone, which turned out to be a customary approach; Paul Krugman eventually dubbed him “President Bystander.” Perpetually keeping his finger up to the breeze of public opinion (a tendency that Harper’s warned about in an article before he was elected), Obama declared that he was “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage and gays in the military. Despite a reputation as a public speaker, Obama clumsily borrowed a trope from Elizabeth Warren (if you built a business enterprise, you still benefited from public infrastructure and other benefits provided by society) and clumsily shortened it to the bald reduction “You didn’t build that.” Though the Republican Congress was outrageously perverse, Obama was not seen as a strong or effective negotiator with them. He discontinued Bush’s reliance on “enhanced interrogation” but carried on an illegal drone war that killed hundreds of civilians, executed a United States citizen without trial, and even killed his son. He consented to TSA officers placing their hands inside traveler’s clothing and touching their private areas over their underclothes, forcing women to remove breast prostheses and underwire bras, and forcing the elderly to remove diapers, and blandly assured the public, in a State of the Union Address, that they could take the train instead. When he appeared at a memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings, he began his address by calling out “Helloooo, Boston!” as though he were at a picnic or pep rally. Exiting Marine 1, he returned a soldier’s salute by casually lifting his coffee cup to his temple. Recently, he has agreed to an official portrait that seems to suggest that he might have felt more at home taking a Hepplewhite chair from the Oval Office and squatting in the bushes, a tendency of which no one would have suspected him to this point. Guantanamo remains open, despite Obama’s promise to close it (another point on which Congress fought him tooth and nail).2010–2020: There’s really nothing to say about our present decade except to name Trump, whose election is the worst thing that the United States ever did and an indication that our 400-year experiment in democracy is a failure. No one, including, apparently, Trump himself, expected him to win, so the Democratic leadership blandly sidelined a candidate who actually stood for something and ran one of the most unlikable candidates in history, a monster of vanity and deceit, who published a book after her defeat asking “What Happened” that reminded one commentator on the left of Hillary asking us to walk with her through the five stages of grief. SNL eulogized the failed campaign by having Kate McKinnon perform Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which implied that this word would be Hillary’s answer at the Last Judgment, when a much more characteristic response from her will be “It was someone else’s fault.”As Andrew Sullivan warned before Trump was elected, a Trump Presidency, for our Constitutional republic, would be an extinction-level event. He was right. Trump is mounting a slow-motion coup to destroy the very government that he was elected to preside over, though he is too stupid to understand that he is doing this, and Republicans in Congress are too craven to stop him. Meanwhile, he is itching to use his “nuclear button” and General McMaster talks complacently about a “bloody nose” strike at Kim.A year from now, the question in the OP may be a moot point.