I miss the Cold War

[justalurkr]

www.gocomics.com reruns several classic strips like Peanuts, Cathy, Boondocks and Bloom County. The one above took me back in ways I didn't expect. As a Cold War Era International Relations major at UC Davis, an unbelievable portion of my graduating 3.0 GPA depended on being able to write thousands of words worthy of essay that boiled down to "USA good, USSR bad." I had exactly one professor in 4 years + two summer school sessions who alluded to a post-Cold War era, and lost the crowd to hilarity in the middle of a sentence that began with "the world will no longer be bi-polar," and ended with "multi-polar," because Huntington hadn't written Clash of Civilizations yet. How they would have howled if the prof had even speculated that religion would form the basis of most conflict, foreign and domestic.

I wish more Cold War Era IR majors had gone into tech support rather than the State Department. We might have a better chance at the mental flexibility today's political environment requires.

Comments

[nialla]

Ah, Bloom County. The first cartoon where I thought "Hey, there are other people just as insane as me, and he's a cartoonist."

I think it's impossible to get post-9/11 students to understand what the Cold War era was like. Yet on the other hand, many of the Cold Warriors are still using that lens to view current threats. They need a new prescription, don't you think?

I saw part of a documentary (PBS, I think) with interviews with Russians who were in their teens and early 20s when the system fell apart. They talked about where they were and what as going on at the time, as well as what they're doing now. Very interesting stuff.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Proving once again that Google is our friend and one of the benefits of a liberal education is the ability to come up with good keywords quickly, this links to a promo for the most likely of three candidates to be the documentary you referenced:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5MZkREyhxo

[nialla]

Yep, that looks like the one. I think it was a pretty long one, but I can't remember for certain. They may have aired some similar programming at the same time and it's blurred together.

If you can find it, you might give it a watch. Might make the Cold Warrior in you really nostalgic.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Pre-Opus Bloom County was subtly batshit in a way that post-Opus and Bill the Cat never really achieved, even though I adore both runs.

And, holy Hannah yes Cold Warriors need new prescriptions! Cheney and Rumsfeld being Exhibits A & B of all too many. There need to be multi-focals of some sort, as Putin and his little puppet are certainly informed by the Cold War, but innovating brilliantly in the modern era.

Any chance you recall the title of said documentary? I've been having a lot of success finding interesting stuff from PBS and even better, the BBC on youtube.