I was planning on visiting the Soviet Union in the 70s, and I was in the US military at the time. All of the hoops I had to go through eventually made it next to impossible to go there, so I gave it up. I had one so-called official telling me, “DO NOT LIE TO THEM ON YOUR VISA REQUEST FORM”, and another official telling me, “DON’T LET THEM KNOW YOU ARE IN THE MILITARY.”
You are only a couple years younger than me, but I was way into politics starting in grade school.
Anyway, focusing just on the USSR honeymoon misses the point. He did go to Cuba also, and went to Nicaragua and praised their “heroic revolution”.
I am not a particularly crazy lefty, but to large degree it was a heroic revolution. And the revolutionaries gave way to democracy within 10 years after fighting an insurgency illegally funded by the US. Even if you dislike some of the initial Marxist philosophy of some of the revolutionaries, you would of have to be a nutty right winger to call that an illegitimate revolution.
I agree with you on the merits. It was a heroic revolution. But I strongly disagree with your last sentence, unless nutty right wingers are like 60-70% of the electorate.
Can 60-70% of the electorate remember anything about Nicaragua other than the Iran-Contra affair? I’d love a cite on that.
From a contemporaneous Chicago tribune article:
And how much did people remember about Vietnam when Kerry ran?
All they will need quick refreshers on is who was allied with the bad guys from Red Dawn and Rocky IV.
You are giving me suggestions and insinuation, I just gave you a poll from the period. 43%, dude!
Which, in itself, would constitute historical dishonesty. The Sandinistas, for the majority of their early decades, explicitly followed a policy of non-alignment.
They were socialist in their politics, for sure, but they were also very wary of affiliating themselves with the Soviet Union, precisely because they were focused on issues of local autonomy based on a popular revolution of the Nicaraguan people. They had no interest in being part of the Comintern, or a Latin American domino, or a Soviet pawn in the global Cold War.
Your simplistic description of them as “allied with the bad guys” simply perpetuates the American foreign policy tendency, dominant since World War Two, of characterizing any and all nationalist or socialist or independence movements that ran contrary to American interests as being in league with Russians.
Over time, the Sandinistas, like quite a few other originally-independent revolutionary movements, did accept intelligence and material help from Moscow, but it’s a bit hard to blame them when the biggest bully in the Western hemisphere was doing all it could to crush their nascent efforts at overthrowing the previous dictatorship.
I’m sure you’re right that quite a lot of Americans would take umbrage if it were pointed out to them that Bernie Sanders supported an organization that was “allied with the bad guys,” but that historical characterization of the Sandinistas would be, at best, incomplete, and, at worst, a complete distortion of reality.
He’s arguing whether it would work, not whether it’s right.
Push poll questions in the event of a Sanders nomination:
How do you feel about Bernie Sanders’ support for Nicaragua’s Sandanista government?
1 , 0 ,-1
How do you feel about the Republicans’ illegally funded insurgency campaign against the Nicaraguan government?
1 ,0 , -1
Mhendo, you seem to have missed that I personally admire Ortega and the Sandinisfas.
CarnalK, you seem to be conflating contemporaneous ignorance with levelheaded perspicacity, which strikes me as rather bizarre. We can always circle back to the Gallup finding much more recently that “socialist” managed to beat “Muslim” and “atheist”, the previous gold and silver medallists, for " most unacceptable characteristics in a presidential candidate ".
A putative candidate could have Bernie’s identical platform, but be the offspring of PA coal miners who never called himself a socialist nor ever linked himself with Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and be FAR more electable than Bernie. That’s the sad irony of his campaign: it’s not his proposals that make him a controversial underdog. If the right were warned they’d have to run against a populist lefty, but were allowed to design said lefty’s personal background to their tasfe, it’s hard to imagine a more perfectly cartoonish straw man than this cranky old Vermonter with the Brooklyn accent and “fellow traveller” stamps in his passport.
I’ll back up the observation that even ex-Muslims who like Sam Harris tend to do so from a more emotional/experiential level; when Reza Aslan of all people is schooling you on religion you are at a pretty low level, scholastically speaking. I heard that he wrote a book with Maajid Nawaz that I’m interested in but I don’t have super high hopes for.
I strongly recommend reading What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic by my late professor, Shahab Ahmed. It’s making huge waves in the field now.
I will add that the Sanders phenomenon needlessly short-circuits a strong and time-honored rhetorical shield for progressive Democrats: painting Republicans as hysterical McCarthyites.
“My opponent is so extreme, not to mention desperate, he calls me a socialist merely for supporting policies that make life a little more bearable for working families, like access to medical care or a minimum wage worth the same as it was when Nixon was president. I’m not calling for revolution, for the end of capitalism, or for the government to seize the means of production, so it is scurrilous for my opponent to redbait me this way. The rich have nothing to fear from my program, as supply side economics has repeatedly proven to be a dud. My Keynesian demand-side proposals will empower so many consumers to be able to buy their products, the rich will keep getting richer but without the poor getting poorer. The after-tax income of rich folks will likely even rise, but the modest increase in the portion of the federal budget we ask them to pick up will fix up our crumbling infrastructure, prepare our students for the 21st century, and pay down the national debt. Win-win for all.”
Are these polling results before or after Sanders’s campaign took off?
Before.
ETA: But again, let’s keep in mind that Democratic turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire is down from 2008, while Republican turnout is up. So it would be going way out on a limb to assume that Bernie is benefiting from a sea change in the way the general public views socialism. There were already plenty enough socialist sympathizers within the hardcore primary electorste to explain his results thus far.
Josh Marshall at TPM makes a similar point:
Sanders wrongly assumes town hall questioner is Muslim
So, according to Sanders, brown vaguely South Asian lookin’ guy = automatic Muslim.
Why in THE fuck would he ascribe religious beliefs to someone based on ethnicity in the first place?
What an anachronistic, stereotyping, windbag.
Oops. Clearly Hillary’s not the only Democrat susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease.