I was in Berlin December 31st 1989
Partying
I was in Berlin on New Years Eve a week after the Brandenbug Gate opened. Happy as can be. An American, part of the crowd of the happiest people anyone’s ever seen.
I was there with my girlfriend. We saw a guy in front of us (on the U-Bahn) wearing a hat made of newspaper. She told me:
Tell that guy: “fahrscheinkontrolle bitte”
So I did.
He smiled. Hugged me. Put his paper hat on my head and danced away.
I was already pretty jaded by the time I was 22 but that all disappeared. The fact I was there, strange. I’m lucky. I’ve had a strange life.
Half of my grandparents are Jewish. And yeah it was odd (?) to be shown a doll from Danzig with very beautiful hair, on that same trip.
Hey, that was 44 years before. I was happy for these people, here, now. Happy to be there. It seemed a beautiful country. Possibility seemed endless.
Now that was 32 years ago and Jesus, possibility seems to have been flushed down the toilet.
Who could have imagined that “fahrscheinkontrolle bitte” joke becoming so grim in 2021/22? Now the fucking Gesundheitspass of 1933 returned, and, THE NEW IRON CURTAIN erected?
WTF?
Things don’t add up.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. The west had a fucking brilliant message back then. The music had rhythm. And the idea, “the free world”, yeah, that was a distortion (I’ll get to that), but jesus, the message resonated. How could it not?
The distortion of course was simple.
Look, the basic fact is this: when Hitler’s Wehrmacht rolled into the Soviet Union with dreams of lebensraum and Slavic extermination all the way to the Pacific, and then was beaten all the way back to Berlin with little remaining but a volkssturm of kids and elderly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm, then what exactly was the Soviet Union expected to do after that?
March home to Russia immediately? Or administer the space between the USSR and Berlin as a buffer zone from the evidently hostile west?
I mean, this is a serious question, obvious to anyone who’s not a narcissist, incapable of recognizing others, or an imperial chauvinist or fascist, or an anti Slavic racist. It’s just reality. You cannot wage the largest war of all time, lose, and expect no consequences.
And those consequences were, what? They didn’t have Reggatta de Blanc in Poland, or Levis or Jordache jeans, but everyone got a job and an apartment, an education, healthcare, and so on.
And then they left. After 44 years, collapse or not, they left, packed up and went home. That’s what the Russians did. They controlled governments and militaries in half of Europe, gave everyone public healthcare, then left.
But the US is still there. All over Europe.
They’ll never leave. And they’ve filled up all of that space.
What did they fill it up with?
They filled it up with… (wait for it), Anti-Russia hostility.
They filled it with hostile US/NATO military infrastructure and continuous dosage of Russia demonizing hate speech.
They rolled their hardware (and cookies) into fucking Ukraine! A hostile overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014. They burned Russians alive locked in a building in Odessa and beat to death those who escaped the flames.
Jesus H Christ on a bicycle!
Thinking back, US liberals, all my “friends” (at the time), were ecstatic in 2014, I mean, they were truly ecstatic, on the verge of breaking out into dance frenzy, because the government of Ukraine was overthrown in a violent coup d’etat supported by the US/NATO.
This was before Trump even entered politics.
There was no Trump derangement syndrome yet.
But other derangements had taken hold deeply already.
When I showed them the consequences of NATO’s claim on Sevastopol they said that didn’t make any sense to them. They couldnt follow my logic.
When I showed them the audio clip (leaked) of Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt discussing their personnel choices for the Ukrainian government weeks before the coup, and Victoria Nuland’s speech the year before to Chevron reporting the progress of the State Department’s 5 Billion dollar investment in regime change in Ukraine, they said, “I don’t see anything there other than normal US planning”.
When I showed them the pervasiveness of Nazis in the subsequent government, as heads of most of the departments of government, they said that was exaggerated and bullshit.
When I told them that, on day 1 after the coup, the coup government did two things:
Reneged on the Kharkiv Treaty
Outlawed the Russian language
They said, what makes YOU an expert on Ukraine?
When I told them that Crimea has been Russian since Catherine the Great, before the United States existed, and remember Churchill, Stalin, and FDR in Yalta after WWII? Yalta is in Crimea (Russia), they said, “naaahh… I’m gonna get some books on Ukraine.”
Yeah, good. Do that.
When the Nazi government bombed the Russia-identifying Ukrainians in the east for the last 8 years, they’ve said nothing.
When I said, in 2014, the US has crossed a red line pushing its Russia-hating military infrastructure into Ukraine, and that only psychotic delusional fanatics would devise any such activity, and that by doing it they’ve increased the risk of total nuclear annihilation immeasurably, they said nothing, and counted the seconds until I would leave so they could go back to their New Yorker Magazine and NPR.
Total derangement. Predating Trump.
It predates 2014 too. Their minds were shut off in 2011 too regarding Syria, and before that, Libya.
They’ve been put into some kind of hypnotic state. They walk around functioning normally. But logic and basic awareness of reality are lost completely.
Why did the Soviet Union keep that buffer zone for 44 years? Something about deranged lunatics over there should stay over there? Could that be possible? Were the Russians crazy to think they needed that?
Holy Fuck.
The US/NATO/EU Drang Nach Osten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drang_nach_Osten has marched on since 1991 and since February 22, 2022 has been stopped and is now being reversed.
Whether this solves the problem or not depends on whether western leaders can find it in themselves to stop acting insane, for once remember how to keep themselves rational.
I’m not holding my breath.
Well it is the strange feature of US/NATO/EU war that they wage war, while claiming that they are not waging it.
And people believe it.
People have been de-skilled.
I’ve been writing and speaking against US wars since I left the military, and, while I was in it.
You wage war against Russia, you get what you get.
8 years ago:
”I think we’re in play”
“the complicated electron”
“glue and midwife this thing”
Are you still in play?
“‘atta boy”
I hear a good saying:
“Good luck to all good people. May God protect the innocent. And may the rest of us get everything we deserve.”