you keep using that word
Do I? I don't recall using it very often, and I tend to get awareness of my overused words pretty frequently.
On the other hand, if you are attacking my usage of it as incorrect, no. Comrade P.'s political philosophy is very much centered around "bringing back the past, which was good" and "stopping the liberals from ruining everything". This is reactionary politics verbatim.
MSH, don't you think that Soviet society had at least some good points? Especially compared to post-soviet Russian society?
Not....really. I mean, it's nearly impossible for a society to be totally devoid of good points (except Best Korea), but the USSR was only barely a plus in the twilight of its existence, and massively negative before that point. The early USSR wasn't far removed from a red-painted continuation of the Tsardom, the middle USSR was Uncle Stalin's Playhouse Of Terror, and the late USSR stagnated and died.
Since the USSR more or less used all the non-Russian people who were part of it as clients to be expended if necessary, all of them are certainly better being out of it than not. As for Russia itself, the continuation of the Russian SSR might have been a superior solution to the Russian Federation, but the real problem lied in Gorbachev's fuck ups segueing into Yeltsin's truly monumental alcohol-fueled failures. Tough times in a new democracy are never, ever good. Sometimes that can be overcome. But sometimes you get a man like Putin.
I guess I like their space program, but my respect for space programs is nearly universal anyway.
I'm just 18-year-old. I'm currently arranging my life position.
Holy shit, you're younger than me. (Also, some of you reading this now remember that I am 20 and are again panicking that I'm younger than
you.)
The feel of unity?
Unity, like tradition, is occasionally benevolent, usually benign, and often a severe, severe malignancy when the shit hits the fan. I, for example, would not say that the unity of my own countrymen in trying to burn civil rights on the altar of national security post-9/11 to have been a positive. Further, unity usually means the alienation and suppression of those who aren't willing to jump on the unity train. Dissent is better than unity. It is why the powerful try so hard to kill it.
He didn't state his opinion - he stole national secrets. Whether he was right to do so is another question, but it certainly wasn't covered by freedom of expression.
They weren't the CIA's secrets to keep in the first place. A nation should not hide things from its people.