Why quotation marks? It has got really fucking peaceful with the nukes. The casualty counts have dropped several orders of magnitude compared to the previous period, with WW1 and WW2. There wasn't WW3, and it's because of nukes. Nukes are what made the today's era of world-wide peace possible. So why quotation marks?
You are talking about MAD.
And I do agree with you, MAD did assure a peaceful co-existence of western and eastern block. But you also have to agree that this co-existence was based on fear. Fear of mutually assured destruction. Everyone (with enough brain in their skull) was just scared shitless of pressing The Button.
But was that really needed? No, I mean, were people
really that different on either side of the curtain when it came to just being people to? Different enough to warrant all this fear? Fuck no. And do we really need to re-live this atmosphere of imminent nuclear attack by a big bad evil Enemy? FUCK NO. There's a reason while MAS is preferable to MAD. I mean, hell, why do we need shit like this recent talk about nuclear weapons? Oh, and don't think I think the west is completely blameless. I'm sure if I'd dig enough I could bring up both recent and old, fringe and mainstream threats against Russia. It's just usually western media do that in either more veiled fashion or so ridiculous-it's-just-silly fashion. And I'm far from NATO lover but I also, sadly, have to disagree with certain people here who are of opinion NATO represents direct threat against the Russia. But what is the point of this rant? The point is I'm sick of this. I'm sick of this hidden and open fear-mongering by both sides. I'm sick of unnecessary escalation of the current west-east geo-political situation. Fuck, I want to go to Russia and say I come from Europe without people thinking I'm either some poor sod cleaning toilets for German overlords or outright enemy of Russia. And fuck, I want people from Russia on other "non-western" countries to visit "western" countries and NOT feel like they are being judged, mocked or pitied. Things like
this video? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could find some examples of people living pretty decent under the Soviet Union, agreed there. And I'm pretty sure I could also find examples of people living completely decent in ex-Soviet/EU countries now. AND I'm pretty sure I could find negative examples for both cases. But I'm sick of this political posturing and nationalist bullshit. Europe, Union or not, has seen a dangerous rise of radical, extremist groups in recent years. We don't need this bullshit. And any animosity with other countries, no, we don't need this. EU is not perfect. Russia is not perfect.
I'd just like if I'd just... I'd just like if some people would not try and make it look like people of "west" are really that different from people of "east", you know?