Retrospective determinism -- the logical fallacy that because something happened, it was therefore bound to happen.(Example: "When he declared himself dictator of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar was bound to be assassinated sooner or later.")Nice to know there is a name for this.
I remember when Ronald Reagan died, there was an undercurrent of this going around on the left. Yeah he beat the Russians, but judging from what we know now, they would have collapsed under their own weight anyway. So he wasn't that great a man.
Now this wasn't what they said while Reagan was president. In fact Reagan and the conservatives were the only ones saying that the free market was the future and if we leaned on them they'd crumble. Furthermore, other communist nations like China are still here and growing because they have been given the time to reform. But if Retroactive Determinism works for you, who am I to make you think?
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