Hi Uboat,

Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
This is true but it can work both ways. I believe that at least part of the reason for the fall of communism was that people in communist countries got tired seeing all the things that we had in the West while they were waiting in long lines for old bread. They may have been jealous of us and hated us for what we had but they hated the system that kept them from getting it themselves more.
Yup, it can work that way, especially when there is a concerted effort to "blame the Yanks" for, say, 40 years or so while extolling your own "virtues"... as everyone stands in line for 6 month old bread .

Where the inverse you point to fails is when there is a constant re-inforcement of real world examples where everyone can "see" it's the Yanks fault. Things like constantly harping on the Palestinian problem and the absolute windfall, from an IO point of view, of the invasion of Iraq. When we were back in the Cold War, people had a hard time pointing to specific, empirical (in the sense that people can perceive them even if those perceptions are interpreted by others), acts.