So here's today's interesting Wikiwander to get you going:
The scary video at Kevin's place sent me to check and see if Wikipedia had an article on Vladimir Rezun (aka Viktor Suvorov). They did, and that set me off to the article on defection in general. This, in turn, contained a link to a whole page about nothing but Cold War pilot defections, which is a treasure trove of links to such choice goodies as Viktor Belenko and his MIG-25, which every kid who liked airplanes in the '70s knows by heart...
I remember reading a book about Viktor Belenko in grade school. It wasn't assigned, but I found it in the school library. Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how much, if any, impact that one book had on my politics, but it does raise the topic of getting kids young. Either for free-market principles or for socialism. Frankly, the socialists are winning that war overall, even without the singing.
I enjoyed Mr. Rezun's books on Spetsnaz (fear the shovel!) and his years in the GRU.
ReplyDeleteWe always offered defectors the chance to go and see whatever they chose- car, minder, driver, you give the directions comrade. The theory was that they would realise that the West really WAS different, that we weren't just showing them stage sets. It usually worked, but the dissonance between their whole lives and fact was unnerving.
ReplyDeleteBelenko talks in his book about his, which included a supermarket and a slum.
Supermarkets were always popular, as were libraries among the English speaking. My favourite was one who never said what he wanted to see or do, just had the car go randomly around all day, generally in one direction into the country.
Marxism/Socialism is alive and well in Grade Schools- ever heard of "The Rainbow Fish"?
ReplyDeleteYup, what Tam said. Just about read the print off the pages of my copy of "Mig Pilot". As I recall, the thing that finally convinced him that America was the real deal was when he was allowed to observe flight operations aboard a U.S. carrier. The military was something he could relate to, and he realized that those sailors could not do what they doing unless they believed in it.
ReplyDeleteThe Education Establishment at the University-level that graduates new Teachers for the Teacher's Union to collect is philosophically and operationally Socialist to the core, and the Teachers who emerge from that academic phase carry-on their same indoctrination with their smaller subjects. It's how my parents were/are, how so many of my classmates share the same orthogonal matrix-view.
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