And we won. And so did the people of Eastern Europe and Russia. It was world changing and the mushroom clouds we saw in our dreams as children in the 50s became a little less likely.

Maybe the mushroom clouds would have never happened if we would have just left things alone. The only people that won were the people getting our tax dollars to make the bombs and pay the preacher's that provoked the fear and enabled us to "grow" our ignorance.

The reasons for us starting the Vietnam War were a lie (Gulf of Tompkin). But we are also the last contry to practice slavery - so the enabling effects of our "national" racism may take a few more generations to be culled. The red states, however have embraced eugenics, and will try to hang on to a "white supremacy" philosphy - but in the end - that school will also give way to humanity and truth.

What did we win?

We won the right of a military industrial complex to sell us a false threat of the "evil empire". The right to provoke another nation and it's people into spending on weapons and not social programs.

We won the right to have our intelligence services to finance and participate in coups, like Iran, where we helped oust a democratically elected government to install the "pawn" shaw?

We won the right to commit human rights violations in Chile in another CIA sponsered coup. Look at what we tried to do in Venezuela in 2001. Look at what we did in Haites.

We won the right to be stupid, call ourselves smart and bomb anyone who disagreed with us.

The cold war was a ruse to keep us scared, keep the CCCP off balance so the bomb makers could profit. Of course a 12 step program that lead to a country of dry-drunk born agains also blossomed. An enabling, if you will! The flower of ignorance that blossomed include the eugenics of creationism and a redefinition of mass racial murder as a so called war on terror. Now all it takes to convince us there are terrorists is a picture of a dead Arab's body. He's dead - must have been a terrorist.

We should listen to our hearts and trust our humanity. Our government and religious leaders have been lying to us. We can pretend it's not happening - but there's not enough Prozac to go around for us to rely on the shelter of ignorance.

Just because people don't laugh in our face - we should not assume they don't think we're a joke!:)