Hello, Cold War II!

Dennis Sanders

Dennis is the pastor of a small Protestant congregation outside St. Paul, MN and also a part-time communications consultant. A native of Michigan, you can check out his writings over on Medium and subscribe to his Substack newsletter on religion and politics called Polite Company.  Dennis lives in Minneapolis with his husband Daniel.

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7 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    Yeah, I remember the last time I felt this way was around the 80’s. We lived near Detroit and so my mom told me not to worry, we’d be vaporized in the first major strike since they’d want to take out our factories.

    It felt so very amazing for a couple of years there after the Berlin Wall fell and THEY MOVED THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK TO 11:43PM!!!

    It was a good run, there until 9/11. Since then it feels like we’ve had a new existential crisis every couple of years. This new end of the world feels like a rerun except they don’t have the rights to the good music that was in the show the first time.Report

    • John Puccio in reply to Jaybird says:

      Living in NYC we assumed we’d be vaporized. I vividly remember the CCCP shooting down the Korean Air passenger jet and my parents not letting me watch The Day After, which aired soon after.

      Scary times to be a kid.

      I prefer my Cold War nostalgia limited to watching Charlize Theron kick East German ass in Atomic Blonde.Report

      • In 1969-1972 I went to high school in a building seven miles off the end of the runway at SAC headquarters. We didn’t bother with duck-and-cover drills or such, as we were almost certainly inside the “everyone’s dead” zone. We also got used to it. I don’t remember anyone in high school fretting over whether the Soviets were going to attack. The threat was there but you had to go on with your life. In fact, for males that age, the much more real fear was that the US Army was going to snatch you and send you to Vietnam to die.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    If you’re wondering “I wonder how bad it would be if they nuked (local landmark)”, you can use this fun little tool to find out.

    Put your location (or a friend’s!) into the map and pick your bomb.

    Do you want the ones that North Korea has been testing?

    How’s about the Tsar Bomba, the largest bomb that Russia has ever tested?

    Are you more reasonable and only want the largest bombs currently in the US arsenal?

    You can play with all of these (and more)!Report

  3. fillyjonk says:

    I just look at the news any more and groan, “I’m too old for this s***.”Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    Russia has gone from hundreds of years of one form of autocratic government to another so democracy never quite had a chance to bloom there and it kept serfdom longer alive than many other nations. This is largely irrelevant to whether this is WWIII or not yet. As of now, I am guessing no. My answer might change if Russia temps to flex its muscles with Poland, Finland, or Sweden.

    Despite the innate Democratic Party bashers here, Biden is smart and knows that there is very little appetite for a direct military conflict with Russia. It seems that the majority of Americans currently stand with Ukraine* but I don’t think most people want to send troops directly to Ukraine or even the Baltic states. There were also massive protests in Russia yesterday against the invasion so it is not Russia’s population is all in either.

    I don’t know what the eventual response from North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand will be and it may involve sending troops but I think everyone knows this is a grave decision with huge consequences and is not to be taken lightly.

    *We do have a large number of pro-Putin reactionaries who want the U.S. to be as illiberal and autocratic. Moscow Tucker and Dreher love them some Russia and Hungary.Report

  5. . “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

    Report