I'll spare you all my drivelly memories of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. I was a high school kid in Florida, and unless you're a Berliner, my memories aren't any more special than yours, I assure you.
But on this historic day, we should take a moment to review some of the bullshit floating out there in Medialand.
Those on the American Right like to arrogantly imagine that everything good in the world happens because of America, just as those on the American (and European) Left like to imagine that America is responsible for all the world's ills. In other words, America is a vengeful or benevolent God, depending on your predilections. (Now if only Barack Obama had forwarded the Neda video to all his Twitter friends, we could have liberated Iran.)
Where was I? Oh yes, the mythology.
1. Ronald Reagan brought down the Wall. Yes, indeed he told Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that Wall. And boy did Gorby listen! Remember when Gorbachev sent Soviet tanks and bulldozers to rip the Wall to dust and reunify Germany? No?
Of course, we remember the destruction of the Berlin Wall because it wasn't a one-off event like the Moon Landing or the O.J. white Bronco chase. We remember it because it had a Big Picture consequence -- It was the beginning of the end of the USSR. Which brings us to bullshit myth #2 that's been resurfaced this week.
2. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. It's another sad slice of American arrogance that we focus on the "end of the Cold War" (This was happening to us) instead of the much more globally important and sweeping "end of the Soviet Union." The Cold War was a confluence of detente, doomsday standoff, and proxy wars for influence around the planet. It couldn't last forever, because the USSR simply couldn't afford it.
The USSR was never, ever going to "win" the Cold War. Russia was less populous and poorer than the USA, and its experiment in command economics was a miserable failure. It was also an empire of dominated nations and tribes that had no love for its masters in Moscow.
In spite of this, I know people who honestly believe that Reagan's ruminations about SDI missile defense so overwhelmed the confidence of Soviet military leaders to keep up technologically, that they essentially gave up. (No matter that SDI was a vaporware boondoggle whose even best-case imagining couldn't stop the full Soviet nuclear arsenal.)
You want to know who won the Cold War? It was David Hasselhoff. That's right, the motherfucking Hoff.
The Hoff's superstardom in the Teutonic world is no mere stereotype. In the summer of '89, weeks before the collapse of the Wall, The Hoff had the number one single in Germany, an allegorical tune subtly titled "Looking for Freedom." And since the East Berliners got all the West Berlin radio stations they heard it, too.
After the Wall came down, Hoff sang the damn song at Checkpoint Charlie.
Find more videos like this on HoffSpace
Of course, the Man Who Talks to a Trans Am didn't really end communist domination of Eastern Europe. But it also wasn't Reagan that "won the Cold War." It wasn't even America that won it. It was hundreds of millions of people who stood up and claimed their freedom from a foreign power. That they looked to another foreign power -- us! -- for inspiration (and money) is a wonderful thing. USA! USA!
God bless America.
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