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Rin
2012 Jul 24, 12:28pm
Dan, that Scorpions song makes me depressed because it's a great song about the possibilities of the human race, moving forward, but now, it's just a R&R footnote on the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
While I generally agree with you about the optimism of the 90's, I don't blame Bush for destroying it. Clinton sold out before Bush even got into office. We gave an authoritarian communist China most favored nation status and permitted our corporations to do business with them. We deregulated, even in cases where abuse of the system was almost guaranteed. And we allowed inflation outpace wages. None of those things should ever have been allowed to happen, but they did and they did before Bush Jr. Ever got into office. Republicans led the charge on all of these, but Democrats didn't have to fold so easily.
Dan8267
2012 Jul 24, 12:53pm
Clinton sold out before Bush even got into office. We gave an authoritarian communist China most favored nation status and permitted our corporations to do business with them.
True, and I disagree with Clinton's decision to do that. He was lobbied heavily by business to renew China's most favored nation status, which was started by Nixon and renewed by the president Bush I as well. But at least I understand that there were some arguments that trade could bring about political change.
Personally, I always thought we should have kept trade tightly linked to human rights with all trading partners including China. Of course, today who are we to criticize when the U.S. is one of the worse violators of human rights?
But what really changed in 2001 was the tremendous escalation of executive power along with diminishing liability and transparency of government and curtailing of human and civil rights. Things like the big telecoms being given immunity for illegal wiretapping, Habeas Corpus being revoked, torture becoming a dinner discussion, assassinations of U.S. citizens without charges being considered "due process".
Yes there was economic failings like revoking the Glass-Steagall Act and deregulation, but that's not the same thing as the political reversal of 800 years of progress in western civilization brought about between 2001-2012.
Republicans led the charge on all of these, but Democrats didn't have to fold so easily.
The republicans won because the democrats were all selfish pussies too worried about looking unpatriotic to be real patriots. They were worried about being re-elected and thus acted like cowards and let the republicans get ever evil policy they wanted. If ever there was a party that illustrated the principle All it takes for evil to flourish is good men to stand by and do nothing...
Dan8267
2012 Jul 24, 12:59pm
it's a great song about the possibilities of the human race, moving forward
It's one of two songs that encapsulates how I felt about America during the 1990s.
The other song I heard on NPR years ago, but don't know its name. I can't remember exactly what the lyrics were, but basically it said America did a lot of bad things like slavery and the genocide of Native Americas, but America learned not to repeat these mistakes and is atoning for them thereby earning the right to be a beacon of liberty.
Indiana Jones
2016 Jun 4, 6:45pm
Tank Guy is dead. Are you kidding me? The Chinese leadership will execute anyone in China for blinking their eyes at the wrong moment, let alone someone who stood up to them and became a beacon of hope to a "terrified of their own shadow" populace.
The hysteria generated about the Tiananmen Square “massacre†was based on a fictitious narrative about what actually happened when the Chinese government finally cleared the square of protestors on June 4, 1989.
HydroCabron
2016 Jun 4, 10:39pm
DieBankOfAmericaPhukkingDie says
If TRUMPLIGULA! was tank guy who would have bitten off the canon
He would have laid some negotiation on them that they would not soon forget!
Since they were not Mexicans, they would have shown him bookoo respect. Both him and his African Americans.
Ceffer
2016 Jun 4, 11:23pm
I think if you go to the spot, you can still see the stain of what is left of him.
Patrick
2022 Jun 4, 9:23am
T Lee Humphrey
@tleehumphrey
41m
33 years ago today, the Tiananmen Square protest ended with the massacre of thousands of protesters by the (ironically named) Peoples Liberation Army. #TiananmenSquareMassacre #CCPChina #NeverForget
Patrick
2022 Jun 4, 4:24pm
I'm pretty sure Tank Man was real, but was then killed by the CCP.
fdhfoiehfeoi
2022 Jun 7, 10:40am
One of my heroes is the great Tank Man of Tienanmen. It's been 23 years and we still do not know his name or what became of him. The romantic in me likes to think he's living a quiet life in China. The realist in me thinks he was executed, or worse, shut up in some dungeon anonymous and alone.
I recently found this NY article about him, and it reminded me what the 1990s were like, hopeful and inspiring.
The fall of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, the freedom of Eastern Europe, the end of the cold war and the constant fear of nuclear annihilation, the beginning of the human rights movement in China, and the United States as a guiding light of peace and liberty. It made you proud to be a human.
Then Bush and his Gestapo cronies came along and throw away America's change to shape the world into a much better place through peaceful economic, political, and cultural change. The window of opportunity that America had as the sole remaining military, economic, and political superpower was lost forever. The moral high ground and good will that we had earned over half a century blow away in a matter of years.
I look back at Tank Man and think that we should have done more to carry on his legacy. The 1990s was a time of political, economic, social, and technological change, and a period of unprecedented opportunities. There is a song that most embodies this spirit, and I dedicate it to Tank Man wherever he may be.
#politics