"In Latvia, Bush Lectures Putin on the Joys of Democracy"
A humorous headline from nytimes.com.
It's true that things didn't turn out so well for Latvia and the other eastern European countries, and it's funny how this debate over an apology ("One apology would be enough"/"We certainly will not!") is overshadowing the big picture. So on this 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and the defeat of Nazi Germany, I personally would like to take a moment to appreciate how different the world would have been if we had lost the war. I'd probably either be not alive, or in a concentration camp, hitched to a chain gang with a metal yoke around my neck.
I guess from the point of view of Latvia, things didn't turn out much differently. But hey, a half-apocalypse is better than a full one, right? Relatively speaking.
It's true that things didn't turn out so well for Latvia and the other eastern European countries, and it's funny how this debate over an apology ("One apology would be enough"/"We certainly will not!") is overshadowing the big picture. So on this 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and the defeat of Nazi Germany, I personally would like to take a moment to appreciate how different the world would have been if we had lost the war. I'd probably either be not alive, or in a concentration camp, hitched to a chain gang with a metal yoke around my neck.
I guess from the point of view of Latvia, things didn't turn out much differently. But hey, a half-apocalypse is better than a full one, right? Relatively speaking.
posted by Rex at 3:25 PM
3 Comments:
Or we'd be sold sex work.
I was thinking about this... Bush apologized for the Yalta Accord. But if we hadn't gone along with that, there would've probably been some other war with the Soviets after WWII. Would that really have been desirable?
Totally. Life is about compromise, especially when your life is international diplomacy. Plus, there's only so much the US can do for the world's "freedom" (a word that, oddly enough, has been reappropriated to neocon rhetoric, at least since "freedom fries"), and I don't think it was as obvious then as it is now that the US would have come out on top in a conflict with the USSR. I know; I was there (sort of) during the Cold War.
Still, I guess everyone would expect us to apologize at this late date, considering the lessons of history and our current foreign policy. I suppose it's a nice, harmless gesture.
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"Or"? Chain gangs and sex work are not mutually exclusive. Though I'm inclined to think I would have been sterilized...but, sex work and sterility aren't mutually exclusive either.
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