It was thermodynamics, got a GED too, huh?
A GED in thermodynamics? I’m impressed- that was some high school you didn’t go to. I didn’t realize GEDs came in subjects like thermodynamics, especially since the G is for General…
Where the hell did you get it? A box of crackerjacks?
Really, my GED correspondence school also had courses in Nuclear Physics and Russian History. Thought they might be too difficult for me. 
For the entertainment value, I’d like to start a “make sure Sally can stay” fund. I’ll contribute 11¢.
Got to go to bed now. Don’t post anymore till I get up tomorrow morning. OK? I don’t think I could handle a backlog of 20 zinger posts …
You should have taken the Russian History. You’d learn why, precisely, Ronald Reagan did little more than speed up the inevitable fall of communism. He had no role in making it happen, he only made it happen sooner.
WTF is a GED anyway? A Gasoline Engine Diploma? A Genuinely Egregious Dysfunction?
General Education Development. It’s sort of a substitute for a high school diploma, here in the US.
This is like breaking out of a wet paper bag. Too tired though … got to get to bed.
Oh, OK. I had something to say, but I don’t feel like typing it all out so: WYWU, YWLYAOBOATSSYHPITLT-FH!!!* OMG!!ROFLMAO!!!
*When you wake up, you will laugh your ass off because of all the stupid shit you posted in the last twenty-four hours!!!
Sally, I don’t even have a GED. Hell, I’m just a high school sophomore. This may be the only time I ever get a chance to say this on the SDMB, but even I am your intellectual superior. Want to challenge that? Sorry, but I’ll need to see some credentials first. :wally
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Please, Little Miss GED, don’t get in over your head. Since you’re all about credentials, I have a bachelors of science in political science, with an emphasis on foreign policy. I have taken twelve college-level credit hours on Russia and the Soviet Union, including an entire class about the reasons behind and aftermath of the collapse of the USSR.
The USSR died because of internal pressures. It’s leadership was aged and unable to prevent Gorbachev from reforming the system. Gorbachev’s reforms, intended to remold and bring the Soviet Union back to a systemic equilibrium, instead introduced the destabilizing element of liberty into the Soviet system.
The Soviet Union succeeded in quickly moving their state from an serf economy right on through the industrial revolution and into the modern era. However, with each advancement in technology, the economy diversified many fold, to the point that central planning was no longer possible. Attempts to try localized central planning, or create a system whereby local factories had marginal control over their means of production were incompatible with national Soviet aims. The result was a collapse in available consumer goods and the rise of a conflict between the economic categories called guns (military expenditures) and butter (domestic expenditures).
On top of that, in the first few years of the 1980s, the USSR was led by four different general secretaries – Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev. The first three were old and dying. Chernenko was, in fact, in a coma for much of his “tenure,” and Andropov spent over half of his bedridden. So the economy was listing with no strong hand at the top.
This is where Reagan came in: by pushing vast military expenditures and attempting to destabilize the MAD situation, he caused the USSR to have a crisis of faith, such as it was, regarding military might. By the time Reagan took office, the US could already whip the USSR in either a conventional or nuclear war. He raised the specter of a US that could whip the USSR without breaking a sweat. By heightening tensions, he accelerated Gorbachev’s movement towards his two fatal decisions, both of which were inevitable.
The first major decision was glasnost, which tried to introduced controlled “openness” into the Soviet system. The Soviets quickly learned that liberty spreads faster than any cancer, and compels people to great lengths. They tried to have a wee little bit of freedom, and found the public’s demand for it insatiable. Now, this wasn’t the deal breaker. As China has shown, a new equilibrium could have been found that would have left the USSR ostensibly “communist.”
But then Gorbachev reversed the decades-old policy, first put in place by Khrushchev, whereby the USSR would use force to quell any dissident uprisings in the Eastern Bloc. The USSR, undergoing perestroika in an attempt to realign the guns/butter ratio, simply couldn’t afford to police the Eastern Bloc anymore; also, he hoped to win plaudits from potential trading partners in the West.
With the threat of Soviet tanks lifted, chaos erupted in the Eastern Bloc, which led to Austria opening its borders. Since security between Eastern Bloc states was lax, this open border caused the hemorrhaging of talent and people out of the Bloc. And, in turn, the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Since the entire Cold War in Europe was about Germany – being, in effect, an extended third act to World War II – this was the moment of inevitability. Over the next two years, all the Eastern Bloc countries fell; some fell bloodily, others fell to “velvet revolutions.” All the while, the USSR sat on its hands.
However, without the Eastern Bloc, the USSR, even with its ongoing attempts to reform its economy (perestroika), had no market into which to sell its goods. The abandonment of communism became inevitable. Gorbachev planned to turn the USSR into the USS – the Union of Sovereign States, a federalized democracy with himself as the first president. He was betrayed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who forged the CIS instead, the Commonwealth of Independent States, which was a confederation, not a federation.
The key points here:
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It was Gorbachev’s two decisions to attempt to liberalize Soviet economy and introduce private freedoms, thus bringing to bare against the government the weight of public opinion, and to withhold military support from the Eastern Bloc, thus leading to the fall of Europe to the West, that ended the Soviet Union.
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Gorbachev did not make these decisions because of anything Reagan did. He made these decisions first and foremost because he inherited a crisis. After five years with no real leadership, the Soviet state was sinking. Secondly, he was attempting to break with the failed policies of his predecessors in an attempt to win time and support from the people and the Supreme Soviet. Similar to Khrushchev’s attempt at de-Stalinization, you could consider this a policy of de-Brezhnevization.
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Gorbachev’s decisions were inevitable. With the loss of so much manpower and esteem in Afghanistan, his military would not be able to quell a general uprising, which was inevitable if the guns/butter ratio didn’t improve. Also, no military force has ever succeeded in maintaining an Empire – a forced integration of multiple ethnic groups, in this case hundreds of them. If the USSR was to endure, a political solution had to be found. That meant redirecting capital. However, that also meant limited economic freedom. Which also meant introducing limited liberty, which is an uncontrollable force.
Where did Reagan fit in? He raised the temperature in Moscow, to the point that Gorbachev had to implement these inevitabilities sooner, and with less preparation. Thus, the process was made messier, and the timetable moved up.
Because of Reagan, what would have probably happened in the mid-to-late 1990s (no way the planned economy would have survived the Internet and computer revolution), happened more messily in 1989-1991. That’s no small accomplishment. That’s millions upon millions of people living half a decade less under crushing dictatorships. Even counting the lives lost to the uprisings, revolutions and in the starvation, depression and health crises that followed the collapse of the USSR, the advanced timetable probably saved tens to hundreds of thousands of lives. That’s no small accomplishment. That’s something worthy of praise.
But that’s not the same as “winning the cold war.” You could have had Carter, Mondale and Ferraro in the Oval Office from 1980 to 2000, and the USSR would have still gone under. Reagan, and Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, and Lech Walesa and George Bush made it happen sooner.
If I used any big words your GED didn’t cover, just ask for clarification. I won’t give you one, but it might be funny to see you ask.
I know the feeling. Breaking out of a wet paper bag is just so intellectually exhausting. :smack:
Guin-when come back, bring spell-check 
So do I, but that’s still no excuse to be this fucking stupid.
I suggest you look into some community college courses. Learn a few basic facts about government and history and there might be some hope for you.
And, at last count, about fifty people are expected to attend “my” Dopefest. So yourself.
Robin
Dammit, dammit, dammit. Airman, of course, graduated from high school. I, alas, had to settle for a GED.
One more point. Sally, honey, I’d ask for your money back for your GED.
Robin
The portion of your message that I snipped out below was a very nice post, spectrum. Although I don’t agree with all of it, it was well reasoned and well written. It seems a shame to waste it on the second page of a low level pit thread.
I realize that SallyStar, for reasons known only to herself, introduced the GED question, but still…
I’m a high school drop out. I’ve got a GED. Plus a college degree in biological sciences from a university that’s respected in the field. Plus I’ve spent considerable years doing scientific research.
I find the smarmy attitude displayed here towards a GED to be beneath what I’ve come to expect from members of this message board.
There are times, particularly early in life, when a person is either forced or decides to take one of them-there paths less traveled. That don’t necessarily mean they ain’t as smart as y’all whut grad-u-ated from Central Hy School’s.
Be nice, folks. She apparently missed the short bus to summer camp.
I don’t think anyone here has put down a GED, per se. Mostly they’ve been rubbing SallyStar’s nose in the irony of her demanding credentials of those who would debate her, while her own credentials are hardly noteworthy, particularly given the lack of intelligence displayed in her posts.