"Wars and Rumors of Wars"

That's from the Bible. Supposedly, you will be able to tell when the Apocalypse is coming because "There will be wars and rumors of wars, and earthquakes in various places." Going by that, the Apocalypse has always been coming. So what else is new?

How did Russia get so powerful? That's a good question. By all rights, they should have been flat on their ass after the war, as was most of the rest of the world. The U.S was the only major industrial power that wasn't devastated by the war. Indeed, we seem to have come out of it better than we went in. That's the main reason that you and I grew up with all that prosperity, everybody was making money rebuilding the rest of the world from the devastation of the war. Then, around 1970, the job was done, and the downsizing began. Russia did annex a lot of territory after the war, but most of that territory was as impoverished as they were, which should have made it a liability instead of an asset. The only thing I can figure is that somebody was slipping them foreign aid under the table. Maybe they were being paid to play the bad guy for us. With Germany and Japan suddenly on our side, we needed a new bad guy to keep our people rallied round the flag. It worked for awhile, but then we got involved with Vietnam and Russia got involved with Afghanistan, and nothing was the same after that.

I don't think the depression made people submissive to authority, I think it was the war. From what I've read, the depression made a lot of people angry at authority. The war channeled all that anger at the Germans and the Japanese and made our guys look good by comparison. It was either submit to the good guys or you will be forced to submit to the bad guys.

I've always liked the concept of good guys and bad guys. Of course, in real life, most people are somewhere in the middle, which is confusing and takes all the fun out of it. Can you imagine our soldiers marching into World War II singing something like this?
"Hitler's not so bad, he's just misunderstood.
His mommy and his daddy didn't raise him like they should.
We blame it on society, that's why he's so shrewish.
We'd send him off to therapy, but Sigmund Freud is Jewish."