This is obviously an education issue. Unfortunately, the US have some very talented people but also a whole lot of uneducated ones. But it's not an issue that couldn't be solved fairly easily, given pretty much all other Western countries have solved it. But obviously, as with everything else in the US, education is also business.
Yes, there are serious deficiencies and disparities within the U.S. educational system. The wealthy, affluent districts have wonderful schools, along with a wide variety of expensive private schools. The less affluent districts are not so fortunate, and education is catch as catch can.
But even then, subjects like geography, history, political science aren't really considered all that important by a lot of people. Many people think it's boring and useless knowledge, and they just don't care. The U.S. is still somewhat insular in a lot of ways where many people think "Why should we care about things happening so far away?"
This was bad, I didn't like Saddam Hussein and I think the world and Iraq as a whole were probably better off without him. But that doesn't change that it was an unjustified attack based on lies. And unfortunately, my country decided to support the US in this, so the blame is also on us.
It's certainly on a lot of people, but in the U.S., I could tell that there was a great deal of goading and manipulation taking place. They set up their presentation in such a way that anyone who disagrees with them would be instantly branded the worst person in the world.
You can see the same manipulative tack being used in these discussions here, where people use terms like "Putin apologists" and "Russophilia," as if they believe it will have some kind of effect on how people believe and perceive these events and the positions being taken. But I can see way beyond such cheap rhetorical tricks.
Obviously not
But at least when looking at it from the outside, it feels very much like if anyone even remotely suggests something that would be good for a lot of people in need and it is a federal system, then someone instantly calls it socialism and then it pretty much dies. Despite (I think) all other Western countries have such systems and are not even remotely socialistic countries.
I think that is connected to the fear of communism and socialism that the US suffered from during the cold war and after WW2 and obviously because you have a lot of institutes that are making **** lots of money from not having these systems in place.
I think the monied interests obviously feared socialism in the sense that it would lead to wealth redistribution and cut into their profit margins by treating their workers fairly and decently. That may be why they were willing to work with non-communist labor leaders and unions who were very much anti-communist.
The common people in the U.S. at the time were still mostly religious, and they feared communism because it was atheistic and godless. They also associated feminism and the Civil Rights movement with communism, although the anti-communists started to appear more and more over-the-top crazy that the anti-anti-communists started to gain traction. That is, people who were not communist themselves, but found America's obsession with communism to be going way too far (such as in our war against Vietnam). If you look at films and TV from those years, you'll see anti-communist militarists made into the butt of jokes; they were a laughingstock.
Yes and no, had Hitler conquered Russia, things would have been extremely bad and most of the world might have been based on nazists now. So I don't really think there was much of a choice. And I honestly don't know how much was known about Stalin before WW2, I don't think the world media was as fast as they are today when you can digitally send everything in a few seconds. But maybe he was known as a bad person or whatever, I really don't know.
As far as what was known about Stalin before WW2, I think a lot of the early U.S. impressions of Stalin came out of the sensationalistic Hearst press. All that really mattered in the eyes of the U.S. was that Stalin was a communist, and the U.S. was against communism and the Bolsheviks from the very start. That's all they needed to know about Stalin. I don't think they would have viewed Stalin as much of a threat in the 1930s, as the USSR didn't have the wherewithal to be a global threat at that point, and Stalin seemed content to confine his activities to mostly within his own country, de-emphasizing the concept of global revolution (since that didn't seem to be happening anyway).
I think Hitler was viewed as the more immediate threat because he already stated many times that he was intent on reversing the "shame of Versailles." Hitler was breaking treaties and promises he made. Stalin was cold, calculating, and paranoid, while Hitler was an impulsive, flaky, hotheaded megalomaniac.
I honestly think that the US and UK got scared, they pretty much had a race to get to Berlin first. And Russia at this point had a huge army in Europe and Germany and Italy etc. was defeated. And I think the US etc. got scared that Stalin would use the opportunity to spread communism, and maybe even continue the war, so a lot of things happened here. Also, remember that the US was still fighting Japan at this point at a very high cost.
So a lot of things were happening at the same time and they also had to think about the post-war and what should happen in Europe. The US I don't think was ever interested in a weak Germany as they despite WW2 would still be the main opposition to a communist Russia post-war, but they needed Europe back on track fast, which is probably also why they did the Marshall plan.
They might have gotten scared, although I think they agreed beforehand that the Soviets would take Berlin militarily and then divide it up later. Patton wanted to go all the way to Berlin and beat the Soviets, but he was told not to. It's also interesting that many Germans, including many Nazis were also in a race to get to the Western Allied lines as quickly as possible, lest they get captured by the Soviets. The Germans who fell into Soviet hands could expect much harsher treatment than they would if they were captured by the Americans.
I sometimes wonder how it might have turned out if FDR had remained healthy and survived his fourth term. A lot of people have mixed views about him, but one thing that appears evident is that he was a master geopolitician.
Again, the US was really into all this and the Cuba crisis etc. the weapon race with Russia, trying to shape the world so to speak. But again the US have a record of assassinating presidents, think about Trump it happened twice.
Yes, and having lived here all my life, I have grown rather skeptical whenever government officials, along with their cheerleaders and pundits, seem hellbent on falling all over themselves to get out the word and point out to everyone they see who this "really bad, evil, horrible enemy" is. I just look at the whole situation, roll my eyes, and say "Here we go again."
