The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

My friend Pat just posted a great review the book Red Plenty on his blog. I'm not really equipped to understand the nuances of economic theory, but I try to comprehend it all because it holds such a big impact on my life. More than that, I'm fascinated by Cold War history and the Soviet Union, so I think that I might try sometime to read Red Plenty.

I believe that my generation is the last to have memories of the Cold War and that certainly can't be said of everyone in my generation. I was a pretty astute kid. I watched the news from early on--before I was in kindergarten. I was very much aware of the Soviets and the Cold War and my elementary school years were filled with a real terror that the Soviets would invade or that war would break out between the U.S. and the Soviets. I remember when the wall fell. A lot of people in my age group remember that, even if they weren't too terribly cognizant of the Cold War. More importantly for me, I remember when the Soviet Union officially dissolved at the end of 1991. I was 13 and felt like this huge burden had been released from my arms (I was a bit of a worrisome kid). All that fear in my youth engendered my adulthood obsession with Soviet and Cold War history.

What is interesting is that, after WWII, there was great confidence that the world was not too far removed from a future global conflict. It would undoubtedly occur in Europe. It would be the U.S. versus the USSR. It would involve nuclear weapons. Captilalsim versus communism. You could very easily argue that, during the last half of the 20th century, Europe was the most dangerous place in the world. But the war never happened. There was all this tension in Europe, but conflict happened on the edges of empire--not at its heart--like water slowly boiling over a pot. Korean. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Ethiopia and Somalia. Then, as if someone lowered the temperature on the stove, the boil would settle down and we'd go back to our Cold War while these nations on fringes suffered the fallout of our idealogies. The metanarrative that had dictated so many lives didn't culminate in massive clouds of mushrooms, it didn't build into an inescapable war of destruction. It ended without explosion. It fizzled out like the fuse on a stick of dynamite in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

I recommend you read Pat's post because it's really interesting as he applies Red Plenty to our current situation in the States.