So you ARE from Minnesota then? hehe. Fun teasing the spectrum kid. Ok not that much fun.
Oh my, my bad Tom B. Regan & Reagan are the same to me, just anglicised spellings of Ó Riagáin or Ó Ríogáin. In school we used the Irish language names for Irish families. All the best loudmouth Republicans in American politics are Irish though don'tcha know.
@jem, I have no great issues with Ronnie as an iconic man. He was a big man on the world stage for sure however excess 20/20 revisionism makes me fell ill. I was there, I remember the 80s and I'm not as convinced that Reagan was calling his shots as much as others credit him. There was a cost to Reagan's approach. I can't think of a good analogy really but it is like a doctor curing a distressing disease by giving you a different one.
Charles Krauthammer (feel free to correct me again Tom B) coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" I believe? It seemed to me that afterwards Reagan realised, oh that is what I am doing? oh okeydokey then!. I am trivialising of course but there was a disconnect between the first and second term.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in my mind anyway was a like snow building in unstable ways to form an avalanche waiting for a final trigger. Much of the process was mindless erosion. I personally credit Gorbachev with 70% of the final sequence. Reagan's squeezing did have an effect but it would have been dismissed by a healthier, younger Soviet state. It was fortunate for Reagan the old guard hung on a little too long.
So you credit Reagan for creating certain contributing conditions and I credit a far longer chain of events within the USSR.
Hairsplitting perhaps but what was actually said and done vs what was interpreted matters to me anyway*. I just dread the day when Trump's face is put on mount Rushmore by those who concoct a glowingly revisionist past for him.
*"We will bury you" for example. Did he mean that or we will be present at your funeral?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you
at least that makes the world a better place. For me.