Columnist.
"As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: 'This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom." --Ronald Reagan. June 12, 1987. It would be hard, 20 years later, to recapture the exhilaration of the day the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The amazement. The happiness. The first swing of the ax. The thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands pouring across like a great human tide. The joy. Above all, the peace of it.
What ever happened to all those books attacking God, or at least the idea of God? They were quite fashionable not long ago. The bookstores were full of atheists on a roll -- Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris.... They were all here a minute ago. Where'd they go? They seem to have disappeared, or at least abated. Isn't it time for some money-making, best-selling sequels?
The headline on the front page made it sound like big news: UN nuclear chief sets Iran inspection. So? Another year, another inspection by the sleepiest watchdog on the planet, the United Nations' own Maxwell Smart -- the one and only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Agency and Office of General Permissiveness. Director ElBaradei has just been to Teheran making nice with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where the two held hands for a ceremonial photograph and agreed that the UN's inspectors would soon visit Iran's latest no-longer-secret nuclear processing plant.
The course of American policy in Afghanistan had been clear from the first of this administration. This president made it clear even before he was president -- when he was on the campaign trail. So it was simple enough for the commander in the field to sum it up when asked to speak at an international conference the other day: Afghanistan was no longer going to be the forgotten war. On the contrary, it was a "war of necessity," and "the central front on terror." This country would pursue a "comprehensive new strategy ... to reverse the Taliban's gains and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government." Because the "return in force of al-Qaida terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence."
What do you think it's like just now to be a GI somewhere at the end of the earth, say in mountainous Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan, and see the latest video of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid addressing the press outside the White House, just having left still another strategy session on this endless war? Is it like being a grunt in Vietnam back in the chaotic Sixties and reading about the Best and Brightest urging another escalation? Or is it more like being a member of the Chosin Frozen advancing in a different direction, that is, retreating down the Korean Peninsula in what we now call the Forgotten War?
What an impressive picture that was in Thursday's paper. It showed rank upon serried rank of goose-stepping troops in front of Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, formerly Peking. There were also drone missiles and amphibious assault vehicles and the kind of mass formations the most populous power on Earth can arrange for special occasions, or even ordinary ones. The grand parade was being staged in honor of the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, which of course is neither the people's nor a republic. Nor, lest we forget, does it represent all of China -- not so long as freedom reigns just offshore on Taiwan.
"Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow, endangering the global nonproliferation regime, denying its own people access to the opportunity they deserve, and threatening the stability and security of the region and the world." No, that wasn't Israel's tough-talking prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, warning against Iran's aggressive tendencies again. It was Barack Obama addressing the UN Security Council last week.
There must still be places like the all-night cafes and cafeterias I remember on the Lower East side, where students could sit till all hours nursing a cup of coffee or maybe a glass of tea -- a glesele tay, to lapse into my childhood Yiddish -- while solving all the problems of the world, or maybe just stirring them up. Or at least making the kind of obscure ideological distinctions that seemed all-important at the time. Intellectually, the New York of the 1930s may have been the liveliest part of the Soviet Union. Name your own opiate of the intellectuals. It would surely be represented during those all-nighters. And fiercely debated. With any luck over a good piece of strudel, which would be the only connection with the real world. A visiting rabbi circuit-riding here in Arkansas once recalled his seminary days in New York when he was trying to study a page of Talmud in such a setting -- an assignment that can be a week's if not a lifetime's work -- when he realized an old man was looking over his shoulder. "Nu," asked the stooped figure, "you want an argument?"
"When the wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together. They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget." --Norman Borlaug It could have been the picture on some tattered old travel poster blowing in the wind: Visit Mexico in the Fall. It was long ago and we were on our way to see the fabled Copper Canyon by rail, and the same scene kept being repeated outside the window of our swaying old passenger car on the Chihuahua al Pacifico line somewhere south of Chihuahua and before we reached the first slopes of the Sierra Madre. All was flat, dry, brown and barren. One arid vista succeeded another, one adobe hovel followed another. And then, like a dream, acres of bright green fields appeared, their stalks of grain waving in the wind, and in the middle of this postcard view, a great Victorian mansion. Then it was all gone, and once again we were rolling past much the same scrawny fields that had come before. Only later did we learn that we'd just passed a Mennonite colony.
Not that folks with an iPhone, complete with camera app, need be reminded, but it's definitely a visual age. Which could explain why it's a vulgarized one. Nothing can be hinted at any longer, it must be shown. Preferably in stark lighting. Which may explain the long decline and sudden fall of ACORN. It's scarcely been a secret all these years that ACORN has been an ongoing scandal. It's been involved in so many cases of fraudulent voter registration, I've lost count of how many of its people have been hauled up on charges. The last estimate I saw was something like 70 of its employees in 12 different states. Yet only now has it moved to the center of public indignation. What took so long? In a way, ACORN's behavior is supposed to be outrageous. Founded right here in Arkansas, it's very business is community-organizing, protest-planning, and tantrum-throwing. For it strives to follow Saul Alinsky's classic guide to agitation for fun and profit. And it could have gone merrily on its scandalous way if some of its mischief hadn't been captured on film.
