What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[Speaker to Animals]

They didn't hide anything from the American public, millennial. You have no idea what it was like back then. The world was divided in two, and the other side was this dark, evil place where people lived in fear and misery.

[SuburbanFarmer]

They didn't hide anything from the American public, millennial. You have no idea what it was like back then. The world was divided in two, and the other side was this dark, evil place where people lived in fear and misery.

I certainly learned all about Hitler in 90s high school. Barely anything about Mao or Stalin. Certainly zero about Pol Pot etc.

College had a brief overview, but nothing that really expressed the horrors of gulags etc. just “political enemies were sent to Siberia” or some such.

It may not be “hidden”, but it certainly isn’t taught.

[Speaker to Animals]

You guys do not understand how much everything changed in the 90s.

The Soviet Union was the evil empire when I was a child. We went to bed as children wondering if everything would be destroyed by nuclear war.

[SuburbanFarmer]

You guys do not understand how much everything changed in the 90s.

The Soviet Union was the evil empire when I was a child. We went to bed as children wondering if everything would be destroyed by nuclear war.

I still wonder that, almost daily.

Nothing has changed in the nuclear standoff, except that there are myriad more triggers in place to kick it off.

[C-Mag]

You guys do not understand how much everything changed in the 90s.

The Soviet Union was the evil empire when I was a child. We went to bed as children wondering if everything would be destroyed by nuclear war.

I still wonder that, almost daily.

Nothing has changed in the nuclear standoff, except that there are myriad more triggers in place to kick it off.

It's not even the same. I grew up in the shadow of ICBM Silos, we grew up understanding that if the balloon went up we might as well kiss our asses goodbye.

[SuburbanFarmer]

You guys do not understand how much everything changed in the 90s.

The Soviet Union was the evil empire when I was a child. We went to bed as children wondering if everything would be destroyed by nuclear war.

I still wonder that, almost daily.

Nothing has changed in the nuclear standoff, except that there are myriad more triggers in place to kick it off.

It's not even the same. I grew up in the shadow of ICBM Silos, we grew up understanding that if the balloon went up we might as well kiss our asses goodbye.

Has our arsenal gotten small enough not to blow up the world several times over?

Has Russia’s? How about China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Britain?

Do you feel safer knowing that we fly those birds without even a nod to Congress, or even a clear idea of wtf our foreign policy is?

[C-Mag]

It's not even the same. I grew up in the shadow of ICBM Silos, we grew up understanding that if the balloon went up we might as well kiss our asses goodbye.

Has our arsenal gotten small enough not to blow up the world several times over?

Has Russia’s? How about China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Britain?

Do you feel safer knowing that we fly those birds without even a nod to Congress, or even a clear idea of wtf our foreign policy is?

I get it. There is still a threat out there, the murky foreign policy is definitely troubling. But during the cold war the tensions were high between the US and Soviets. All it took was one guy, nameless in a silo or just a fighter or on a ship, and shooting could have started back then. The Soviets outmanned and gunned us 10 to 1 in Europe. The US strategy in Germany was literally to die in place, but to buy a day or two for the US to marshall forces. We don't have that type of tension anymore.

Imagine being a Soldier and your mission is to die in your foxhole, but to take out as many Commie bastards as you could before you go.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's not even the same. I grew up in the shadow of ICBM Silos, we grew up understanding that if the balloon went up we might as well kiss our asses goodbye.

Has our arsenal gotten small enough not to blow up the world several times over?

Has Russia’s? How about China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Britain?

Do you feel safer knowing that we fly those birds without even a nod to Congress, or even a clear idea of wtf our foreign policy is?

I get it. There is still a threat out there, the murky foreign policy is definitely troubling. But during the cold war the tensions were high between the US and Soviets. All it took was one guy, nameless in a silo or just a fighter or on a ship, and shooting could have started back then. The Soviets outmanned and gunned us 10 to 1 in Europe. The US strategy in Germany was literally to die in place, but to buy a day or two for the US to marshall forces. We don't have that type of tension anymore.

Imagine being a Soldier and your mission is to die in your foxhole, but to take out as many Commie bastards as you could before you go.

Maybe during the Korean War that was true, before we built up an arsenal that would destroy the enemy completely (along with everything else).

What is different in your opinion, between tension with the USSR and Russia? What stops us from bombing the shit out of them over a fighter jet? Just tradition?

[Speaker to Animals]

You were not there at an old enough age to see the difference. The cold war fucked with our generation in a way you do not understand. You guys got the post-911 treatment, which made you cynical about security theater, for good reason. The 1980s was the real deal. We almost destroyed modern civilization in that decade for real, twice. In one case, averting N-Day required a Soviet Air Defense Forces officer to disobey a direct order to launch.

You also have to consider the effect of Hollywood and television. Pro-parastroika propaganda began in earnest in late-1980s. That is when you started seeing films that either humanized Russians (as was the case in the film about a Soviet seaman washed ashore in a small town), or it reduced hostilities to a matter of comedy to be ridiculed (as in Spies Like Us). By the time you came of age, it was completely normal to see Russians as simply other people whereas, in the 1980s, a Russian in America was a novelty, and if not a defector, was looked upon with suspicion.

I remember the first time I encountered Russian nationals here on visa in South Florida. It was actually a very strange experience in a way I do not think you grasp due to your slightly younger age.

[Speaker to Animals]

For instance, consider our presidential debates. It's about gibs versus immigration. These are important issues, no doubt, but consider what Gen X saw as children with Reagan and Carter debating what to do about an existential threat to.civilization itself. Not just of social and moral decay, with consequences long drawn out, but an immediate destruction of everything. And the Russians were constantly threatening to do it. They argued about how best to respond to half the world locked down by an evil, murderous political ideology that was amassing ever more nuclear warheads and missiles to carry out their threat.

Another thing to consider is that you guys grew up with leaders of foreign enemies being some fucked up dictator or whatnot. When Gen X grew up, the PM of the Soviet Union was The Enemy on a level more akin to Hitler. You grew up with foreign enemies that were problems for Americans over there, somewhere, not affecting us too much here. The PM of the Soviet Union was the leader of a nation bigger and just as strong as the United States, committed to destroying us, and the only thing keeping us from WW3 was our resolve to respond with overwhelming nuclear force, which of course would destroy the world as we knew it.

And I think that is where millennials fail to understand the nature of Gen X cynicism. Your cynicism is more about the fakery of the security theater with which you came of age. Our cynicism was about our powerlessness to do anything about the actual end of the world as we knew it, initiated by some evil empire we could not really do anything to stop (as far as we knew, because despite what people tell you now, their collapse came as a surprise). This was the point of the hyper-materialism and hedonism you find in 80s music. People were like, fuck it, we are probably all going up in a flash of light or radiation poisoning at some point, let's fucking party like it's the end of the world.