AHC: textbooks truly cover Reagan, genocide in Guatemala, dangerous 1983, + wind down of cold war.

I got the Homemaking Badge in the 1970s, it actually had a vacuum cleaner on it. I think I was the only kid in my pack who got that, and, for what were then obvious reasons, there was a bit of snickering.

In redemption of my masculinity, I should say that, the badge notwithstanding, I was pretty much the biggest slob you could ever meet, and still am.
And maybe we’ll know we much closer to equal rights . . . when two 13-year-old boys argue about whether nursing or doctoring is the better field? :)

With one boy arguing that nursing has less training before you start making money, and also per the Ben Stiller character in the movie “Meet The Parents” who said it was the better fit because it has more actual patient care and less of the administrative side.
 
I think a main expense was that of the Soviets finally catching up on land-based nuclear missiles in the 1970s, and much less on the flashier topic of Reagan's "Star Wars."

Caught up?
They did that in 1977
1977 25,342 23,044
1978 24,424 25,393
1979 24,141 27,935
1980 23,916 30,062
1981 23,191 32,049
1982 23,091 33,952
1983 23,341 35,804
1984 23,621 37,431
1985 23,510 39,197

under RR Buildup, the US ended up with about the same number of warheads deployed, but the USSR was on a building spree
 
I didn't say that the amount of things or the scope of things was equally bad, but that they both did bad things, and each quite a lot of them

To the downtrodden peasant in a central American republic, if the egalitarian values of communism hits home on one hand, the US support for the military trying to suppress any and all dissent hits home on the other.

the 2nd World was all about crushing dissent, from the bogus 'Sluggish schizophrenia' favored by the USSR for dissidents put into mental hospitals, because you had to be crazy not to love what the Motherland was doing, to Pol Pot putting a Million into pits.

Yep, both what the 1st and 2nd World were doing was equally bad.

Only to those on the Left, maybe
 
the 2nd World was all about crushing dissent, from the bogus 'Sluggish schizophrenia' favored by the USSR for dissidents put into mental hospitals, because you had to be crazy not to love what the Motherland was doing, to Pol Pot putting a Million into pits.

Yep, both what the 1st and 2nd World were doing was equally bad.

Only to those on the Left, maybe

Peasants aren't ON the left or right, that is MY WHOLE BLOODY POINT

They will adopt a belief system that fits their situation

If there is a military dictatorship crushing dissent, then Communism's agenda will seem the obvious fit

The peasants aren't left wing, they adopt a left wing identity/agenda as the natural fit for their dire situation

Left and right are meaningless to these people - it's what hope and chances that are offered
 
I still think teachers should jump in there and give it their best attempt.

For example, my first year of college, I took Micro-economics in Fall '82 and Macro-economics Spring '83, and neither of the two teachers said, hey, by the way, we're going through the worst economic downturn right now since the Great Depression. 1982 was a very serious Recession (yes, I'm putting the capital R in on my own). Okay, they had a standard textbook to get through. But it's also lack of effort to connect with the students as the young adults they are. The professor's phoning it in. It's like we're seeing the result of a system which rewards publication and committee work, but not teaching.

My teachers tried to give some real world current events updates now and again in the three economics courses I took.

Granted unlike you, in the early to mid 2000s, we had the internet and the 24 hour tv news networks, so finding and keeping up with current events, or even getting information directly from websites of the Federal Reserve, SEC, whoever, was a lot more practical.

One of my professors actually told us the very first day that he would not use a textbook at all, but he was also teaching a 300 series course during my junior year in university, so it helped quite a bit to have already covered a lot of stuff over my sophomore year to get an idea of economics, finance, and the world of business in general.
 
. . to Pol Pot putting a Million into pits. .
The whole Maoist ideology of back to the land and the idea by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge “leaders” that they could simply will a 3-fold increase of rice production, and if it wasn’t happening, it was taken as evidence of sabotage.
http://cambodialpj.org/article/justice-and-starvation-in-cambodia-the-khmer-rouge-famine/

I think this was probably the main contributing factor to the Cambodian genocide from 1975 to ‘78.

There was plenty of direct killing (“the killing fields”). But the really big numbers came from famine, which was majorly directed toward former city dwellers and one region of the country. Plenty of other people experienced and were victimized by famine, too. And the Khmer Rouge denied it was going on, of course they did.

* about two million persons died in this genocide
 
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This might be a good time to bring up the idea of telling children and teenagers the truth about the world in age-appropriate fashions,

which is probably most talked about in the context of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews, trade unionists, communists, Slavic persons in Eastern Europe, Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies, mentally ill persons, lesbian and gay persons, and probably others.
 
The whole Maoist ideology of back to the land and the idea by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge “leaders” that they could simply will a 3-fold increase of rice production, and if it wasn’t happening, it was taken as evidence of sabotage.
http://cambodialpj.org/article/justice-and-starvation-in-cambodia-the-khmer-rouge-famine/

I think this was probably the main contributing factor to the Cambodian genocide from 1975 to ‘78.

There was plenty of direct killing (“the killing fields”). But the really big numbers came from famine, which was majorly directed toward former city dwellers and one region of the country. Plenty of other people experienced and were victimized by famine, too. And the Khmer Rouge denied it was going on, of course they did.

* about two million persons died in this genocide
You're still being way too kind two the the Khmer Rouge. I would take Nazi Germany over them it looks like a Summer Outing that the Nazis did compare the Khmer Rouge. And again nothing really happened to that many people for doing this the world just sit back and said I was happening except for Vietnam of all countries.
 
You're still being way too kind two the the Khmer Rouge. . .
If you say so. I said approximately two million persons killed in the Cambodian genocide, which was about a third of the country’s population.

And if Vietnam hadn’t invaded on Dec. 25, 1978, it would have been even worse.
 
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Why did Vietnam invade? Well, because Khmer Rouge soldiers were crossing the border and attacking Vietnamese villages and killing Vietnamese citizens, and if anything’s a justification of war, that is. And the country has the right of self-defense even if their name is Vietnam and we hate them.

Vietnam drove all the way to the Cambodian capitol of Phnom Penh.

I think that’s a good thing because it stopped the genocide. Now, Vietnam did occupy Cambodia all through the 1980s. And that seemed to really rub the western world the wrong way, even though I think we occupied Germany for at least as long after WWII and a possible resurgence of the Khmer Rouge was probably a bigger risk to Vietnam than a post-war Germany was to us.
 
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