Social_Critic wrote:It's trunk has been struck by lightning, it's bark has been stripped by borer beetles. And it lacks the energy to repair itself. Then a series of blows strike at it, it tries to react, and in doing so it makes matters worse. So eventually it falls over.
I've explained why this logic doesn't work already - the Soviets had faced more serious crises prior to the 1980s and not only survived them but grew stronger. Let me spell it out for you: the thing that changed between those earlier crises and the ones that occurred at the end of the Soviet Union was leadership. It wasn't strictly systemic.
To counter this you have... restated your point in the guise of folksy wisdom. So your logic is apparently insufficent and facts you presented (more on those in a moment) were wrong. Your whole argument is worthless.
Social_Critic wrote:utter corruption of the nomenklatura, which by then was more worried about their dacha in Barvikha than the country's welfare
Which sounds nothing like Mikhail Gorbachev. How do you explain that he was not only a supposed exception to this systemic corruption but that he was apparently also able to get the top job despite this?
Social_Critic wrote:I discussed these events which struck the weakened tree, or that kept it down even as it somehow tried to grow back again. Litvinov criticized me when I conflated Yeltsin standing in front of the tank with a tank firing on the White House two years later, but I see it as a continuum in the slow death of soviet communism.
Which makes no sense because the later event was years after the fall of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin who did everything he could think of to sever ties with the Communist past. And you made no such distinction the first time you raised the event, because you genuinely couldn't tell the two apart. Only now that you've been caught out have you tried to recast it.
The only other points you've referred to in your posts (eg. oil prices) were actually provided by other posters prior to your entry into the debate. You only started referring to them when you were challenged.
Social_Critic wrote:(very nice place, I lived there and we had grat parties).
I was there so even though nothing I actually said is entirely accurate or sensible, I'm still credible (not like those 'commies'). That's why I have to keep reminding people that I was there, like an insufferable bore constantly dropping names. As I said to Volodya once "one of these days, pow! straight to the moon!"