One More Toast

If you happen to have a bit of tipple left over from Christmas, today, raise a glass to the end of the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union which voted itself out of existence on this date in 1991. Consider also a second toast to the 40 million or so they murdered to keep the idea that communism worked alive. Numbers are sketchy since even though most of the slave states have fled the coop, Russia is ruled by leftovers from the ancien regime.

This also represents a major turning point in the Cold War which started with the end of WWII with the refusal of Russia to withdraw its troops from eastern Europe and included Korean war, the Vietnam War, and numerous other on again off again conflicts. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the torch was picked up by the Chinese who seem to have the idea that China should include every piece of land on which a Chinese ever set foot and any expanse of ocean over which a Chinese junk ever sailed.