you can carry the parallels of the failed american socialist revolution to the failed russian socialist revolution through the 30s, to the point where they aligned at their common apexes to defeat a common enemy, and into the 40s and beyond. the russian propaganda was, of course, deeply anti-american, and the stalinist show trials went on well through the 40s, aligning with the mccarthyite scare. mccarthyism is often presented to us as a battle we overcame - that, in the end, we didn't become "like them". but, the truth is that we were really alike at more or less the same time. they didn't become like "them", either, they reformed after the death of stalin, which happened at about the same time that mccarthyism fizzled out.

both states exited the 50s seeking to enact a broadly socialist vision for their country, one built on expanding the use of technology to make the lives of their citizens better. both states made real progress on this into the 70s. but, then both states seem to have been overtaken by corruption at more or less the same time.

remember that what actually happened in russia was a military coup, and that this kind of shady manipulation of events behind the scenes seems to also be the norm in the united states, which has also experienced recent coup-like events, both in 1980 and in 2000. it is not clear what the guiding force behind the presidency in either country really is, only that it seems to be some combination of state intelligence services and large financial backers. america and russia are really more or less in the same mess.

if it seems like russia is rising and america is falling, it's because america had such a ways to fall from. in truth, they're both going nowhere but collapse.

and, i think that's the longer view of history, here - a positive comparison of failed american and soviet socialist revolutions, coming from the same basic problem of the society not being advanced enough.

now, we can ask interesting questions - what if america had not undergone westward expansion? what if it didn't annex mexico? what if it didn't buy louisiana? what if it let the south secede? would the greater population pressures amongst workers in the north-east have led to more struggle? it's kind of a sadistic exercise, isn't it?

but, i think we can state this much in the positive: if we are to imagine that the united states is something that we create through collective decision making, and we acknowledge that we wanted it to evolve towards a socialist society, then we made an error in expanding too far to the west and too fast. this is the root cause of the failure of the american socialist revolution: westward expansion at too great a rate to sustain industrial development.