WHEN you think about it, Joe Biden is the Yuri Andropov of American politics and Donald Trump the Yeltsin-cum-Gorbachev delineating the end of the old regime. More generally, one cannot but notice the resemblance between the May Day Parade balcony snaps of the 1970s and the dramatis personae officiating over the decline of the United States from their ideological Zimmer frames. A synchronicity more telling than a gloomy comparison, however, has arisen in response to the death of the aforementioned Mikhail Sergeyevich, 91, this week. For the occasion, obituarists have dusted off a hallowed cliche of progressive journalism: the canonisation of a safely grey man from the past to vilify still more an all-too-reigning villain. As regards the US Presidency, this is a feature of all pop-historiography, post-Nixon. The Republican leader before the incumbent is always honourable and a “real conservative.” In the age of Trump, Bush is beloved; in the age of Bush, Reagan was the one; in the age of Reagan, Ford. The top perk for an outgoing GOP President or front-runner, in fact, is to no longer be Hitler. Something like this exaltation by deprecation is in play – right and left – apropos of Mikhail Gorbachev versus Vladimir Putin.
The problem is the Soviet Union’s last leader doesn’t deserve it. That the USSR didn’t come to a bloodier and, for the wider world, more dangerous conclusion was down to the courage and convictions of Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (in that order). Moreover, nobody twisted Gorbachev’s arm to become a dedicated communist in the 1950s and he was never exiled on a matter of principle during his long career as an apparatchik throughout the 1960s and 70s. That era was coterminous with persecution and murder on a less-than-Stalinist but terrifying scale. Rarely, if ever, in modern history has a man displayed more intelligence, noble bearing or savoir-faire while negotiating a time-out on behalf of an exhausted empire. For that, Gorbachev deserves his place in the chronicles. But he was no Gandhi, Mandela or Solzhenitsyn. He was the Robert E. Lee of Cold War I.
Western leftists only embraced Gorbachev in the 1980s because he gave them a way out of having to defend the indefensible. They could pretend instead that the summits in Geneva and Reykjavik proved the USA and the USSR were equally culpable and jointly needful of redemption. Sting even wrote an anthem for that muddleheaded worldview. Those on friendly terms with communists – like, for example, a certain young member of the so-called ‘Bolsheviks’ faction of the NSW Labor Party – were never going to give credit to a pontiff, a Republican and a Tory for walking into a bar and saving the world. Anthony Albanese’s letter paying tribute to Gorbachev yesterday only names Reagan (after drive-by references to glasnost and perestroika). Many conservative commentators have been no less historically deluded. Contra the great Nigel Farage, Gorbachev had no coherent “vision” for the Russian Federation. Inconveniently for purveyors of unflattering comparisons, he also had the same view of NATO-creep as Putin, took a nationalist line on the Russo-Georgian War and backed the annexation of Crimea. For that, he was banned from entering Ukraine. Gorbachev was as admirable as a communist could be but he is nobody’s hero.
Perverse Preposterous
that events that climate change makes worse are getting worse – flash floods
The rains that will never fall again will now cause perpetual floods?
rightly drawing the conclusion from what they can see already on their TV
Ah, the most reliable “scientific” source of all, the teeev. ROFLMAO.
as well as worse bushfires
But hey, let’s burn the coal and crank up the temperature (and atmospheric water content) by another couple of degrees and then we’ll decide how bad it is.
Are you asserting that the temperature has already risen by a “couple of degrees”(all caused by human action)? Calm down, you are becoming hysterical.
No, we’re not going to pander to the old pig-headed people who don’t admit that they backed the wrong horse.
No, we’re not going to pander to the old pig-headed people who don’t admit that they backed the wrong horse.
No, we’re not going to pander to the old pig-headed people who don’t admit that they backed the wrong horse.
Enough about Bob Brown (though even he has made a couple of sensible comments lately, he must be gaining maturity).
Worse than what? 1939? mid-1850s? Try to gain a bit of historical knowledge, it will stop you appearing hysterical.
LOL.
“We’re all doomed I tells ya!”
The same alarmist claptrap we’ve been fed for more than fifty years.
Except back at the beginning we were told we were all going to freeze to death, and/or run out of food to feed the planet.
I take my advice from scientists who study the field extensively and publish extensively, not ageing, probably retired, keyboard warriors who think they are experts and argue strawman points that have been debunked a millions.
I also notice when unusual weather events happen, which are consistent with climate change and show the seriousness of the issue. Intensification of rainfall, and the seriousness of the problem it causes, is happening worldwide in front of your noses, but you’d prefer to never admit you backed the wrong horse 20 years ago.
Perverse Preposterous
I take my advice from scientists who study the field extensively and publish extensively, not ageing, probably retired, keyboard warriors who think they are experts and argue strawman points that have been debunked a millions.
Clearly you have no understanding of science or the scientific method, so it is entirely understandable that you are easily gulled by purveyors of snake oil. This is sad, but it is what happens when the intellectually incurious meet the con artists of the world.
“Debunked” is one of those slogan words used by snake oil salesmen who have been caught out, and revert to argument by “authority”. You need to expand the range of your general knowledge so that you are not so easily conned.
I also notice when unusual weather events happen, which are consistent with climate change
Like the rains that fall never filling the dams? You need to study history a bit more, and also look at the changing “narrative” of the klimate “scientists”. If you are capable of doing so.
Intensification of rainfall, and the seriousness of the problem it causes, is happening worldwide
Perhaps not, the “narrative” has had to change to meet reality.
you’d prefer to never admit you backed the wrong horse 20 years ago.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall …
PS, have you got around to checking how many failed predictions of an “ice-free Arctic” have come and then gone unfulfilled? Or would the answer upset your confidence in klimate “science”?
My 2c worth as a scientist with one of my majors in Envir Sci. Believe the end of days peril at own risk. Earth has survived worse than trace gas “anomolies” that actually might be within geological norms…
Publication makes truth … is that what you believe?
There for if I say “Global Warming is bunk” and that is published then it would make it true, right?
Can you stop wanking in public about how much better you understand the scientific method, as if it’s you and your little circle of crank fellow travellers who, just like the anti-vax movement, think they’re the ones who know what’s really going, not the vast overwhelming majority of researchers?
You had a case, of sorts, for urging caution 30 odd years ago. (I’m being generous.) That’s because, as a research field, it was young, and only got going in a serious way in the 1960’s and 70’s, being dependent on not only better computing power, but better measurement systems. But during the 1990’s it all firmed up, and despite your last hurrah, so to speak, of the “pause” that wasn’t really a pause in the 2000’s, there is definitely no credible basis on which to dispute the IPCC findings anymore.
Picked a wrong horse [gee, that was to predict, when you saw it was the likes of googly eyed Monckton, arts grad Delingpole, a couple of irrelevantly mathturbating statisticians, as well as religiously motivated (God wouldn’t let this happen) evangelical Christians like Spencer and Christy promoting it] 20 or 30 years ago, and you won’t admit it.
Sad.
“gorvy never thought communion was shite. ”
Even into his nineties? Well what a complete and dangerous idiot he was! This only goes to show how unreliable many revered statesmen are. There are probably some Nazis around today who think Hitler was on to something. And some Japanese soldiers on remote pacific Islands still fighting WWII. Maybe they all had a reunion a few years back.
Perverse Preposterous
Can you stop wanking in public about how much better you understand the scientific method,
Sez the fool whose lack of understanding leads him to bow before the false gode of klimate “science”.
But during the 1990’s it all firmed up, and despite your last hurrah, so to speak, of the “pause” that wasn’t really a pause in the 2000’s, there is definitely no credible basis on which to dispute the IPCC findings anymore.
Indeed, very firm.Here’s a few very firm predictions.
‘”Professor Wieslaw Maslowski from the Department of Oceanography of the US Navy predicted an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the summer of 2013.
Maslowski added that his prediction was on the conservative side, too: “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007. So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
“Also back in 2007, we had NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally’s prediction: “The Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
“In 2008, University of Manitoba professor David Barber prophesied: “We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history]. This is a very dramatic change in the High Arctic climate system.”
“In 2012, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge (UK), Professor Peter Wadhams, foretold of a complete collapse of the Arctic ice sheet by 2015-2016”
Top … people, top … people. What was your phrase:
I take my advice from scientists who study the field extensively and publish extensively,
a couple of irrelevantly mathturbating statisticians,
Who managed to really “debunk” Michael “Hockey stick – Hide the Decline” Mann, not simply wave away opposing opinion.
just to help people the berlin wall etc would never had happened without glasnost
Non Mentis
Just to help you, the Berlin Wall was being circumvented through other Warsaw Pact countries, that had opened their borders to traffic westwards. This effectively rendered the Berlin Wall redundant.
Somehow, I doubt that Gorby opened those borders.
PS, did you mean that the Berlin Wall would never have fallen, or the Berlin Wall would never have been built, without Glasnost? The pre-school level phraseology “would never had (sic) happened” is ambiguous. Back to sentence construction class for you.
John you forgot the prediction where the Southeast of Australia was supposed to get hotter and much drier … the rain wouldn’t fill the dams, and we needed to build desalination plants.
Then after three years of heavy rain (opposite of what they predicted) … then they blamed the floods on Global Warming because never let a crisis go to waste. Really their prediction is some bad thing will happen some time and that will be Global Warming … it’s exactly like a weird nature religion, but not science the way I have always understood it.
The book “Environment Betrayed” by Ed Krug gives you a first hand eyewitness view of the political corruption that has been going on. He saw it all and wrote it down.
Tel
John you forgot the prediction where the Southeast of Australia was supposed to get hotter and much drier … the rain wouldn’t fill the dams, and we needed to build desalination plants.
Klimate “science” has produced so many bullshit “predictions” that to list them all would be to break the internet. I focused on the “ice-free” Arctic predictions because that the ice is still there is unarguable (though the fools will try to argue the point anyway).
Tel,BJ, I have nothing to add.
Thanks.We should all have a merry last drink together before the world goes A over T.
Hugh