36 Years Ago Today
By Mitch Berg
This happened:
How do you explain this to someone under 40, who didn’t have to wonder if they were going to get vaporized if some colonel in some bunker somewhere had a bad day?
11 Responses to “36 Years Ago Today”
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June 12th, 2023 at 10:37 am
Mitch, don’t know what rock you had been living under lately but chance of getting “vaporized if some colonel in some bunker somewhere had a bad day” right now is exponentially higher than 40 years ago.
June 12th, 2023 at 10:46 am
Yeah, but I’m not living next to a. Minuteman III silo today.
June 12th, 2023 at 10:54 am
Compare Reagan speaking to the bumbling idiot we have in the office today. Good lord.
June 12th, 2023 at 10:57 am
I was never huge Reagan supporter, and certainly never bought into the narrative of those who idolized him as the man who single-handedly won the Cold War. But I will then concede that he was right about the Soviet Union during his Presidency, a time when most liberals were preaching that accommodation with the Soviets was the only way to ensure peace because the “Communists were here to stay” and that the Berlin Wall would not come down in anyone’s lifetime.
Moving forward to the current iteration of the Republican Party — Reaganism might as well be CRT cuz they ain’t having it.
June 12th, 2023 at 11:21 am
I was never huge Reagan supporter
Of course not. He was an anti-communist.
and certainly never bought into the narrative of those who idolized him as the man who single-handedly won the Cold War. But I will then concede that he was right about the Soviet Union during his Presidency
Classic Fluffy-ism. Sounds oh-so-thoughtful, but it’s complete BS that doesn’t concede a thing.
Single-handedly. Who claimed that? Is that even possible? And how was Reagan was right about the Soviet Union? In every way? Most ways? How was he wrong, if at all? Details, please.
June 12th, 2023 at 11:21 am
Apparently President Reagan had to win over his staff about the wall quote. Man had amazing instincts.
I never lived so close to missile silos, just in So Cal, where all the defense contractors used to be ( and about 5 miles from Lockheed). We were pretty much toast as well.
June 12th, 2023 at 11:26 am
David Stockman: any of youse remember him? He was the last man who understood the federal budget. Back when we had a budget that the President submitted to Congress, and which was declared “dead on arrival” by Tip O’Neill for not spending enough money. Remember him?
Nobody in Washington does. They don’t do budgets anymore. And Democrats don’t reach across the aisle to build consensus: they have a pen and a phone, they issue executive orders, they do whatever they want.
Not like the old days. Not like this:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/01/25/tip-and-the-gipper-when-politics-worked/
June 12th, 2023 at 12:19 pm
….and then a couple of years later, it happened. Hundreds of millions freed from Communist tyranny–regrettably mostly reversed in Russia and Belarus now.
It strikes me that the genius of Reagan was to see how bankrupt the USSR and Warsaw Pact were, and to realize that short of getting their own people annihilated, there really was no way the Soviets could compete. In Libya, Grenada, and more, the Soviets learned the hard way that it was going to be tough projecting force around the world without working aircraft carriers.
June 12th, 2023 at 4:56 pm
When I was stationed in Grand Forks back in 1973 – 1973, our superiors constantly stressed how important our mission was. According to them, an ICBM from either the USSR or a sub off our coasts, would take the longest time to reach us than any other military target. The entire state was a target, due to all of the missile silos and two strategic bomber wings. In 1973 into early 1974, the ETA of an enemy missile, was 18 minutes. We had to get our bombers airborne, then we were supposed to haul ass to a Canadian rally point, for possible recovery of surviving bombers, in a Dodge quad cab pickup truck. There, we were supposed to be given money, rations and air transportation to an undisclosed air base. The times we actually made the run took almost 4 hours. By 1976, ETI was down to less than 10 minutes.
June 12th, 2023 at 4:57 pm
DOH! 1973 – 1976!
June 13th, 2023 at 8:06 pm
Reagans Mexican border jumper amnesty sealed the fate of California.
For that alone, he will go down as a villain in our history books.