Author Archives: Tin Man

The Fall of the Wall

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I thought I remembered where I was when I learned that the Berlin Wall had fallen, but I think I’m wrong.

We were living in Tokyo, and I was a junior in high school at the American School in Japan. I was at school on a Saturday morning, because I was on the Brain Bowl team and we were going to a meet. (Wow, that’s a nerdy sentence.) It was also the weekend of our fall play, You, the Jury, in which I was playing the judge. We had done a show the night before and we were going to do another one that night.

Now I realize that I couldn’t have heard about the fall of the Berlin Wall on that Saturday morning, because I just looked at a 1989 calendar and I see that the wall fell on a Thursday night in Germany, or Friday morning in Tokyo. So I guess I had heard about it on Friday, and on Saturday morning we were just talking about it. Memory is tricky.

I grew up in the 1980s. It seemed like it had always been the 1980s and always would be the 1980s. That’s why it was weird when we reached 1989. It didn’t seem possible that there could be a last year of the 1980s. The year 1989 seemed like the future, and as for the 1990s — wouldn’t we all have flying cars and robots by then?

But 1989 came, and Ronald Reagan left office even though he had been president forever, and George Bush came in, and the Cold War and the 1980s ended at almost the same time.

It’s unlikely we’ll ever experience such a stunning day again. The collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe was euphoric; it was an exclamation point, a tangible event that changed things. Certainly the collapse of the Iranian government would be such a day, or a sudden decision by the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians to live in peace. But those wouldn’t change the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our enemies today are murky; not states, but groups of people who are still looking for ways to kill us. If things improve, they will only do so gradually.

Back then, Francis Fukuyama talked about “the end of history.” Well, even if history ends, the world and its problems go on. We were naïve 20 years ago; not anymore.

* * * *

Interesting links:

* Tom Brokaw describes anchoring the only live American newscast from Berlin on the night the wall fell. Here is how that newscast happened. Here is video of his original report.

* We know about the Berlin Wall, but what about West Berlin, stuck in the middle of East Germany? How did West Germans get from West Germany to West Berlin? Here are one man’s memories of such travels, and here’s a description of the roads. And here’s Wikipedia on the inner German border.

1990 Pages

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I’m tired of hearing people complain that the House’s health care bill is 1,990 pages.

First, here is the health care bill. The pages have wide margins and are double spaced, and most lines are indented at least once.

Second, it’s not like this is the PATRIOT Act, where members of Congress were given hardly any time to read it or debate it before voting on it.* Congress has been working on health care for months. Any member of Congress who wants to read the bill has the opportunity to do so. And anyone who doesn’t has staffers to read bills and summarize them — which is not ideal, of course, but it’s better than not having time to read it at all.

(* The same people who criticize the health care bill do not seem to have criticized the PATRIOT Act, except for libertarians.)

Third, although Joe Q. Public also has the opportunity to read the bill online, there is no constitutional requirement that members of Congress give us time to do so. “Good old-fashioned Americans” are always talking about going back to the principles on which this country was founded. Well, this country was founded on the principle that you elect people to represent your interests in Congress, and then you shut the hell up and let them do their work. You are not a lawyer and you have no idea how to read legislation. If you don’t like what your elected representatives do, you vote them out at the next election.

Okay, I’m being snarky. Of course we’ve always been a rambunctious country, and citizens have always had the right to protest against their government. But my point is that the founders didn’t create a direct democracy, they created a representative democracy. There was no Internet 220 years ago, no telegraph, and no expectation that the average citizen would read legislation. If you’re going to complain about getting back to the ideas on which this country was founded, at least know what you’re talking about.

If you want to complain about the health care bill, fine, but base it on something substantive, not on OOH IT’S TOO MANY PAGEZ!

A Year Ago

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A year ago last night, we heard people cheering in our neighborhood as Barack Obama was elected president. It was wonderful.

Last night, one year later, we heard people cheering in our neighborhood as the Yankees won the World Series. I couldn’t have cared less.

I mean, I watched the last few minutes of the game on TV so I could see them win. But I really didn’t care. I’m happy for the city, but I’m not a Yankees fan. If I’m a fan of any baseball team at all, it’s the Mets.

Maybe it’s because my family is originally from Queens, like the Mets? Actually, I get it from my brother, who will always look back fondly on the 1986 World Series, when the Mets defeated the Red Sox. The Mets are the underdogs; they’re more interesting to root for, because they’re always losing. The Yankees are rich and can buy their way to victory and don’t need any more fans.

Of course, this also applies to Mike Bloomberg, whom I voted for the other day. But the Yankees are not running for mayor.