Tear Down This Wall! (Brave New World, Part Two.)

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Yesterday, the Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, and the transition has begun!

Good. I've been saying for months now that I just want this crap to be over.

I mostly just feel like the last four, maybe even five years was nothing but a long ass grind, a big waste of time that didn't need to happen and benefitted few, if any, Americans in any real way.

It's been a long damn ride and I'm just tired of it.

May I suggest
May I suggest to you
May I suggest this is the best part of your life
May I suggest
This time is blessed for you
This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright
Just turn your head, And you'll begin to see, The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight
The reasons why
Why I suggest to you
Why I suggest this is the best part of your life. ~May I Suggest, Red Molly

But ya know, I've seen multiple people in the last couple days compare this moment to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th and 10th, 1989.

I think that's mostly right.

At that time I was just a 15 year old kid who was a couple weeks from getting his driver's license. On that particular day, November 10th, I'd had a counseling appointment in Alpena that I'd gotten out of school a little bit early to go to, we had gone to the grocery store and the mall, and my Mom let me drive home. It was pretty well past dark by the time we'd gotten home.

Fun fact; We'd just gotten Cable, thus catching us up culturally to things like CNN, MTV, rap music videos, sports channels and the very beginnings of the 24-hour cycle we all take for granted now.

After unloading the groceries and warming up the Pizza my Mom had gotten from Dominos, we sat down in the living room and turned on the TV, which happened to be set to CNN. We watched, transfixed, as people partied it up and streamed through checkpoints while armed guards stared blankly, with rifles slung, and the common people, everyday Germans from either side, took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.

The common person was right there live on international news, doing what all the bombers and jet fighters and guns and tanks in the whole Western world up to that point had not been able to accomplish.

The world was changing, had changed, nothing would ever be the same again. Whole worlds of possibility had opened up within the span of hours, a whole separate world of evil and repression, gone in less than one day.

There is a world
That's been addressed to you
Addressed to you, intended only for your eyes. A secret world
A treasure chest to you
Of private scenes and brilliant dreams that mesmerize. A tender lover's smile. A tiny baby's hands
The million stars that fill the turning sky at night
Oh I suggest
Oh I suggest to you
Oh I suggest this is the best part of your life. ~May I Suggest, Red Molly

I saw this last night at work, and I posted on Twitter a briefer version of what I've just written.

I heard later on this morning, that some of the shitty conservative old people on First Shift were freaking out when the election got called for Biden.

Imagine, to look at a moment like this and not want it to be happening. 

That, right there, was the bent little old guy who is one of the two people who normally relieves me in the morning.

The other First Shift worker, an older lady who's a bit older than me, like me, she voted for Biden and mostly just wants all this evil shit to be over with. I actually spoke to her about it all on Thursday morning.

And my African-American roommate and I have been cracking up about "Conservative" overreactions to all this stuff on Facebook all week.

And the kid who told me about the old First Shift guy's reaction is a fairly politically-centrist moderate Democrat, part-Native, married gay dude whose main topics of conversation, when its up to him, are his husband and their adopted daughter. 

He wasn't even born yet in 1989, and wouldn't be for about a year and a half yet. Dude is very much the sort of person I wouldn't have even thought of even existing when I, as a young kid in 1987, heard Ronald Reagan say "Mr. Gorbachev, OPEN THIS GATE! Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"

And you know what? I'm perfectly well cool with that. Human progress demands change and exposure to new ideas and new people.

For all of his faults and misguided beliefs and wrong policies, I think somebody like Ronald Reagan understood that. At least he had grand, sweeping visions about things like nuclear disarmament and world peace, at least conservatives back in those days had some solid ideas they could openly share with the rest of the class, even if they often didn't live up to them.

I miss those people.

I want America to go back to being that country that motivates people to tear walls down, and to not be the country that threatens to put up walls around itself.

That's all.

Part One.

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