Gorbachev is dead

I needed anime to post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgm14D1jHUw

3cl1ps3

oh, that's what Jackson's tweet was about

Gvzbgul

Gorbachev was alive?

Poorochondriac

cursedking

Oh my god I remember that commercial

Shadowfire

That commercial sure is something.

cursedking

I wonder if that’s the only American tv commercial ever made explicitly for an English speaking audience that’s in another language?

It’s certainly rare if there are others

I guess por que no los dos?

I needed anime to post.

https://twitter.com/felixjmann/status/1564715053353701376

I needed anime to post.

https://twitter.com/headfallsoff/status/1564722499061010433

Juggernut

Ronald Reagan.

Raijin Quickfoot

I think I thought he was dead already

KalTorak

I just dropped by with present for warming of house.
Instead, find you grappling with local oaf.

BahamutZERO

can reagan die a second time please, just once was too good for him

Label

This must be posted, surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNl7u_ckbHU
(slightly nsfw due to sexual themes, nothing actually explicit.)

DanHibiki

https://youtu.be/hZgmcm7nLjE
truly Gorby's greatest role...

edit: damn it can't find that Jhon Oliver interview where Gorbachev threatened to nail him to a wall.

MrMonroe

The implications of this not just being in the semi-official Dead Bastard Watch thread are... interesting.

I needed anime to post.

Fuck megathreads

Raijin Quickfoot

That spot on Gorbachev’s head?

HERPES

I needed anime to post.

You put every dead guy in the Kissinger thread guess what, when Kissinger dies, that thread's ALREADY CLOSED

BahamutZERO

I have no awareness of if gorbachev deserves to be in the dead assholes thread or not

Pinfeldorf

If it's a person you've heard of, chances are pretty good they are and/or were an asshole.

Doodmann

I wonder how many of these guys last thoughts are "I can't believe I didn't outlast Henry Kissinger that fuck"

Uriel

I literally only know two things about Gorbachev

The thing where Reagan told him to tear down this wall and the above Simpsons episode

Quetzi

BahamutZERO wrote: »

I have no awareness of if gorbachev deserves to be in the dead assholes thread or not

I mean he's complicated, ultimately

He was a reform minded socialist who wanted to try and turn around the slump of 80s USSR and increase political and economic freedoms in the country and try to bring an end to the cold war

But also he was maligned from all sides for his positions, and he indirectly led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which has a whole host of other problems associated with it

And, y'know, he's a major political figure, of course there's blood on his hands somewhere

Athenor

Damnit! Kissinger was RIGHT THERE!

Centipede Damascus

TV writer/producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach has a story

https://twitter.com/OKBJGM/status/1564739255573704705

sometime in the late 90s, i went to a friend's bachelor party in las vegas...
the party dinner was held at a restaurant called "red square" at the mandalay bay hotel.

if you have not been there, red square is a restaurant-shaped parody of the collapse of the soviet union.

in front of the restaurant stands a decapitated statue of lenin brought here from the dying remains of the evil empire.

the inside is garishly decorated in golds and red, old issues of pravda for wallpaper, propaganda posters... they even have a drink called the "chernobyl" that is served with a sugar swizzle stick in the shape of a three eyed mutant fish.

as the dinner came to an end i noticed a retinue of thick-necked, earpiece wearing bodyguards surrounding someone i could not see through the throng, so i got closer to find out who deserved that much security at a las vegas theme restaurant.

it was mikhail gorbachev.

i would have been interested in meeting the man, but that wasn't going to happen. after watching him go, the host told me he was in vegas to give a keynote address and that he liked the food at red square.

the idea that the venerated-but-problematic leader of an empire that collapsed on his watch - partially because of his own awareness of its corruption, but also from being outspent by reagan in the arms race and becoming mired in a cruel and disastrous campaign in afghanistan -

would, in his dotage, enjoy meals in a living mockery of his own failures as a leader is a tragic, comical, satirical notion i would expect from a terry southern screenplay or a preston sturges film... or maybe a rod serling production.

Sterica

I guess he’s stuffing Earth’s crust now.

Tonkka

I do like Pizza Hut.

Jedoc

Dasvidaniya, old comrades.

Johnny Chopsocky

Either the protections surrounding Kissinger's life force are being removed one by one by Death or there's some Highlander shit going on and he's actually gaining life force from this.

Really hoping it's the former.

DarkPrimus

https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1564723383304159233

Captain Inertia

Gorbachev seems like one of the least problematic leaders from my lifetime

I don’t think the USSR dissolved so much because of him, but because his reforms allowed folks in all the republics to finally follow through with what Lenin and Trotsky initially offered them at the very beginning of the revolution- a vote on independence. The final breakup was the inevitable and obvious outcome that the Bolsheviks saw would happen back then and thus used the Red Army to make sure those votes went their way, got super paranoid about it, and then spent the subsequent years leading up to WW2 purging millions of citizens over it (as well as all the purging over personal beefs and “sabotage” I.e. reporting truthful production numbers instead of straight up lying to meet quotas).

And then spent the post-Stalin years swinging between de-Stalinization reform and then pulling back on it when people started highlighting the truth about the country’s “health”

Gorbachev was a supremely gifted “diplomat” who was able to navigate through these 60s/70s swings between factions and push through the civil rights reforms that allowed people to see how corrupt and out of money they really were. Afghanistan and relative economic/military size vs the not-devastated by WW2 US also, of course.

Then came the economic reforms in response, which actually caused the communists to revolt against him, with a failed coup that gave us the disaster that was Yeltsin

Anyway all of this post will annoy some of you and all of you will be annoyed by some of this post but I’ll eat the shit cause it’s interesting and I want to chat about it and learn more

Munkus Beaver

Death of Stalin is a good movie.

I needed anime to post.

i would probably land on gorbachev as a guy for whom, a lot of what is put at his feet, was sort of inevitable based on the road traveled prior to him, and he himself as a "coulda been worse, coulda been better" leader through it

which you know is kind of an uninteresting way to describe someone but that's just kinda where i land on him

pizza hut

DouglasDanger

I had no idea he was still alive

Tef

There’s gonna be a lot of real dogshit communism takes (more than usual). If you’re interested in actually understanding the forces behind the collapse of the USSR, I highly recommend Keeran & Kenny “Socialism Betrayed - Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union” https://ia804603.us.archive.org/20/items/SocialismBetrayed/Socialism Betrayed.pdf

KalTorak

Munkus Beaver wrote: »

Death of Stalin is a good movie.

I happened to watch it not too long after Jan 6

I found it very funny but also horrifying

miscellaneousinsanity

kissinger that mummy fuck

Centipede Damascus

miscellaneousinsanity wrote: »

kissinger that mummy fuck

a bit more of a ghoul or possibly a lich, I'd say

Styrofoam Sammich

A fuck yeah a second thread for celebrating when a piece of shit dies

The Cow King

Yetslin has some legendary benders