I was born a week after the first atomic bomb was exploded in the New Mexico desert, a few weeks before it was used to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My second child was born as people behind the Iron Curtain struggled for freedom in the Prague Spring of 1968 that was crushed by Soviet tanks. My fourth came into the world as the Berlin Wall came down, the end of history, some called it.
People want to be free. China is going to have to face that eventually, and North Korea, and the ruthless oppressors cloaking women in the burkas of sharia law.
Even in the West, liberalism has taken a bit of a hit lately. Despite our recent flirtation with something close to fascism here in America, we are still free. Free to choose. Our wall is one we have erected ourselves. Sure, we have been exhorted and exploited by cynical politicians, but we have laid the bricks with our own hands.
Our psychological wall is built on fear and resentment, but its physical manifestation is not guard towers and barbed wire, it is social media. Where the news is as unreliable as it was in Pravda at the height of the Cold War. Where the guards are internet trolls and bots. Where the head of the politburo inside the Kremlin is Mark Zuckerberg, guarding his commercial interests no matter the cost to informed democracy as ruthlessly as any Stasi guard.
On this thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the question for those of us who still live in the land of the free is this: As the digital wall of false reality is built between us, will we stand by in shocked incredulity like the Berliners who in 1961 watched their wall divide them, or will we be the ones who tear it down?
I so agree that our walls now are so enmeshed with social media! A twitter presidency, in which "policy" is conducted roughshod, and without thought or correct channels, is representative! You're so right that fear and resentment keep growing. I feel that we're all somehow caught in this great web of misinformation and thoughtless passions of "us" vs. "them." How to find civility and space for genuine conversation and diplomacy and policy-making again? It's agonizing.
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