Re: (ReacTor) Five Futures Where the US Ended Not With a Bang But a Whimper

Your tongue-in-cheec comment about Chernobyl in your review of _In The
Drift_
was amusing.
And unlike the scenario in that book, fallout from Chernobyl didn't even
kill vast numbers of people! No; but because rumors after the disaster
grossly exaggerated the number of casualties - a consequence of the
distrust which exists in closed societies - Gorbachev decided to press
harder
on his policy of _glasnost_... which turned out to be fatal to an empire
that
was built on lies (surprise!).
And we all know the politics we've lived through following that.
China, scared by Russia's cautionary example, doubled down on being a
closed
society. Thus, doctors who tried to warn the public about COVID-19 were
beaten by police and silenced.
So the COVID-19 pandemic _was_ the fault of China's totalitarian regime.
While it
is not impossible that the virus escaped from a Chinese germ warfare
lab, we
really have no evidence of that, so I see no reason to make stuff up
when within
the facts we know we already have enough proven facts to show the
Chinese
regime is at fault.
Russia had an eventful history. Hard-line Communists tried overthrowing
Gorbachev,
leading to Yeltsin defeating them and coming to power. But Yeltsin's
response
to Chechen terrorists - indiscriminate bombing of Chechen civilians -
was a
harbinger of what was to come after he chose Vladimir Putin as his
successor.
Russia under Vladimir Putin isn't Communist. It wasn't going around
telling
the workers of the world to unite.
Just as the United States fought Communism in Korea and Vietnam, but it
did
_not_ fight fascism and Nazism in Ethiopia or in the Spanish Civil War,
therefore, Putin's forays into Georgia and Ukraine basically flew under
the
radar of the U.S.; what's a little foreign aggression if you're not seen
as
an existential threat to Big Business?
Unlike Italy, Russia was never known for having severe problems in
getting the
trains to run on time; what Russia has is a drinking problem, but past
leaders
who tried to clear that up found they were undermining one of the key
pillars
of the power of dictatorial rule in Russia, and so Putin has been
cautious in
this area.
John Savard