German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others place candles at the Berlin Wall memorial, marking 30 years since the wall came down. https://t.co/kFNeLjVvux pic.twitter.com/pW7X1ndKM9
— ABC News (@ABC) November 9, 2019
History has proven time & time again that freedom is not achieved by building walls.
As we celebrate #WorldFreedomDay & the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we must remember that America is at its greatest when we tear down barriers to those fleeing oppression.
— James E. Clyburn (@WhipClyburn) November 9, 2019
On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berliners are sending part of the wall to Trump “to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building a world without walls.”
Well played. https://t.co/Wt3RqSK1Ep
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) November 9, 2019
For the record, there was a “wall” across Europe until it came down. I know, I patrolled parts of it. It didn’t “work.” It was a symbol of tyranny & oppression. I saw a family of 4 killed by E German border guards trying to escape. Learn a bit of history before tweeting. https://t.co/azzo46SDTB
— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) November 9, 2019
(Crowley’s tweet, it seems, is actually four years old… part of her campaign seeking ‘promotion’ from Fox News host to Trump official.)
And @MonicaCrowley, I know the painted border wall is a nice backdrop for your photo, but here’s the rest of the “wall” system that tried to oppress freedom. What’s not shown is the minefields and attack dogs, or those who attempted to escape Russian oppression. pic.twitter.com/BpTTt3AeV9
— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) November 9, 2019
While the rest of us were celebrating the fall of the Berlin wall, Putin was desperately incinerating KGB files.
— X Soviet (@XSovietNews) November 9, 2019
On the ‘opposite’ pole:
They were thhiissssss close to being the DSA dream before capitalism ruined it. https://t.co/8mrxqIMLVh
— Every Chicken Sandwich Is A Policy Failure (@agraybee) November 9, 2019
It's true that many active in the DDR civil rights movements wanted to reform not reunification, but a majority of their fellow East Germans had other idea after the border fell.
— veto players stan account (@Convolutedname) November 9, 2019
What went wrong is that they made a country where you could leave without anyone tried to shoot you for it. https://t.co/JsN3r2WGZa
— Every Chicken Sandwich Is A Policy Failure (@agraybee) November 9, 2019
Major Major Major Major
Still hard for me to believe all the ways the world changed while I was too young to notice. I was four…
In open thread news, I picked up that video game Death Stranding and I have to say, for a walking simulator it’s pretty fun.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Reposting from below
Related to topic of the post, I was reading an article in the WSJ (yes, I know) about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It mentioned that a recent poll taken by the German federal government has found that 57% of East Germans think that reunification has not benefitted them, which has likely fueled the rise of the neo-fascist AfD.
It’s scary how so much of what’s been happening in the US is now spreading to other parts of the world. We have to fight this rise of ultranationalism.
Regarding Adam’s point in the post below about whites freaking out about non-whites using Stand Your Ground Laws and guns to defend themselves against racist whites, he mentioned the Tulsa Riots as an example of how whites might react.
However, there wasn’t a broad, national coalition between whites and minority groups back then like there is now, as well as a decades-long civil society dedicated, however imperfectly, to racial equality/justice. Would these factors make any difference? There are tens of millions of Americans who are anti-racist and I can’t see a Tulsa Riots-like backlash not receiving it’s own backlash in response from most of the country
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I don’t think it’s likely to get that bad, but I’m ever the optimist
MoxieM
My German teacher grew up in (West) Berlin. They lived near the wall. Her parents had to find ways to explain/hide/rationalize the sound of guards shooting people trying to escape from the GDR, when she and her siblings were young.
One of my favorite bits of graffiti from the wall is “Irgendwann fällt jede Mauer” or, eventually all walls come down. Something the Trumpistas would do well to absorb.
delk
There is a piece of the wall at my L stop.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
I hope not too.
Do you still play Kerbal Space Program?
hotshoe
Slacktivist’s recent post about Chesterton’s Fence and Frost’s Wall is appropriate to this.
Briefly:
Frost’s wall, Berlin Wall, the Dumpster’s Mexican wall …
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: @Major Major Major Major: I also doubt it would get as bad here, but for a different reason: there are too many non-white people, full stop. I have difficulty believing that some racist/fascist government could execute on the sort of mass roundups required, without (a) inciting massive resistance, at first civil then violent, and (b) any such attempt would paralyze the entire country’s economy.
The Jewish population in prewar Germany was (IIRC) about 3%. [Which sort of gives the lie to the idea that they could take over anything, run anything, in Germany.] By contrast, non-Hispanic whites are 61% (even “whites” (including Hispanics who identify as White) are 73%). It isn’t feasible to try to extirpate a quarter of your population, not to speak of 40%, without going to a complete war footing. Because it *would* produce a civil war.
And then there’s the fact that large parts of the white population in America doesn’t see nonwhite people as a threat — they see us as Americans, period. And that in areas with more nonwhite folks, this attitude is stronger, not weaker. So again, hard to believe any fascist government could pull off mass roundups.
And it would take those mass roundups, b/c I don’t see nonwhite Americans taking such shit lying down.
One last thing: the American economy is an open economy. The idea that somehow the GrOPers could keep it open, while still somehow instituting race-based oppression ….. seems pretty fanciful. Imagine nonwhite businesspeople coming here, and getting caught up in the insanity. It would be chaos. And of course, the moment anybody saw this stuff impending, we’d all move our assets overseas — again, can’t stop it, b/c open economy (unlike China) — and that again would tank the economy.
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I’ve played Kerbal a few times in the last month.
Mary G
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: You never know. If it’s just the out-of-shape goobers who take their AR-15s to WalMart, it’ll be shut down fairly easily. But there are a big component of police officers, ICE & CPB officers, and who knows how many Tim McVeighs in the military. If they all got together and rolled down Main Street in armored vehicles with machine guns, they might be able to control a much larger number of civilians. For a while.
But barefoot Vietnamese ran us out of their country, and certainly in California resistance would be fierce, and we have a lot of creative people in the science, IT, and entertainment fields that would make life hell for an invading force coming from out of state. So no, I don’t think they can take over the whole country. Alabama and Mississippi? Maybe.
The great strength I see in America comes from the immigrant blood that runs in our veins. My grandfather was a farmhand in Sweden, hated being bossed around and the cold, so he walked to Hamburg and stowed away on a ship to America. He never had much money, but he owned his own home and left my grandmother enough to live modestly on by the time he was done. We are self-selected for people like him, who are ornery risk takers not content to stay where they were born. They are not used to obeying authoritarians in the way Germans with their Kaisers and Russians with their Tsars and Stalins are.
So I think that as you say, in the end we will win. But I’ve come to agree with Adam that there’s going to be violence and the question is how much.
ThresherK
It’s fascinating to think that this anniversary sees the former East German football team Union Berlin playing its first season in the Bundesliga.
Ladyraxterinok
I was in Berlin with a study group for American German teachers in 90, yr after wall came down. People from former EGermany were still walking around dazed.
I was able to be in Berlin yr later. There was a large field where people were selling stuff, mostly things left by departing Soviet soldiers. Many parts of uniforms, etc. I got a military cap. Many of the people selling were not soldiers but Turkish (I think) immigrants who had bought up stuff and were selling at good profit.
There was lots of talk about how badly many in East were doing and worry about how well unification might work.
There were stories of people from former WGernany showing up at people’s door demanding that they leave—the EGerman govt had taken their property after they fled and they demanded it back!
As I recall there were many court cases trying to settle who owned what.
I was also in Berlin—with a group from grad school–on Aug 13, 1962–1st yr anniversary of Wall going up. Bit scary because streets were patrolled by Anerican, British, French, and WGerman troops–there was some fear that people on both sides might en masse attack the Wall, despite the EGernan and Soviet guns stationed all along the Wall.
Major Major Major Major
@Ladyraxterinok: how crazy to have been there at both ends!
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G:
IIRC Google’s workforce is about 50% nonwhite. Much of the I/T workforce and high-ly-trained scientists are, also. So it would be *existential* for them (us). Imagine those folks deciding to wreak havoc on the systems that control power, comms, etc, in all of Red America. We already know that the Russians have gotten into our power plants (including nukes). Can you imagine we wouldn’t do the same, take those fuckers down? Civil wars have a way of spiraling out of control.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s the same for every generation.
My father was 1 when he moved from Kansas City to LA with his parents. They crossed the the country in a horse drawn wagon. There were no gas stations between cities, no improved roads, it was horse or train. So my grandfather crossed by horse, and lived long enough to see a man on the moon and own a color TV. My friend who died 2 1/2 yrs ago had a pacemaker in 1972, and the first successful one was implanted in 1968, a year after I graduated HS.
Life changes a lot for everyone, think of the major issues/events over your life, what do you do now that was either not thought of or nothing more than a thought when you were born.
Ladyraxterinok
@Major Major Major Major:
So right! I was bit stunned when I realized that I had been so close to both the beginning and the end!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
I’ve haven’t played it in a while. What do you think of the new expansions?
@Mary G:
Yes, this worries me. The real elephant in the room nobody seems to want to talk about is how the empty red states will completely control the Senate by 2040. That really scares me, because that will become completely unworkable.
And immigrants are America’s greatest strength. They’re not something to be hated or feared and often take the worst jobs that nobody else wants to do. That goes all the way back to the old days. The classic RW argument is that immigrants drive down wages, but they never seem to blame employers who chose to lower those wages in the first place.
@Chetan Murthy:
Agreed.
Omnes Omnibus
I have a small piece of the Berlin Wall and a couple of pieces of the Czech border fence. One of many upsides to being in Germany when it all went down.
Ladyraxterinok
Freaky note—why October date was chosen to be start of new, unified Germany—
If November date were chosen there was fear some might be commemorating Kristalnacht!!
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: oh for sure, I love regaling the younger members of my generation with wondrous tales of pre-9/11 air travel
mrmoshpotato
You just bothsides the Berlin Wall. Chuckles would be proud. (Who wants to tweet this post to him?)
In other wall – “We want wall!” – news, scale this.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
Just ask the Syrians
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I haven’t played with the historical one but I’ve been enjoying having more ground stuff for sure. Super excited for Kerbal 2 next year.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
Now we need US Passports and special drivers licenses that cost an arm and a leg to get just to fly domestically. 9/11 is the gift that keeps on giving.
I do wonder how much longer the “Never Forget!” sentiment will last with 9/11. For those alive in the 60s and 70s, was Pearl Harbor still remembered as much as 9/11 still is?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
I loved that they added Apollo program parts. Before you had to use mods. The KSP modding community is literally the best.
I don’t know about you, but I never had to leave the Kerbin System to max out the tech tree. Just farm science with all of the science instruments in every different biome on Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus. I never landed elsewhere besides Duna and it’s moon, Ike. Which I regret to be honest. As fun as the game is, it can be very aggravating, especially getting interplanetary orbital transfers right, even with MechJeb’s help, not to mention time-consuming
Jay
Martin
My kid is part of the KSP Restock modding team. Check it out, they do really great work.
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I like building bases across the solar system. I would always play with RemoteTech and some kind of life support, so I’d have to build out sat constellations. I’d include a station in that, then assemble a fleet of ships with habitation, life support, all that, and then send them out when the windows open.
CarolDuhart2
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: “@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I was a kid during the 60’s. Even by then things had faded a bit. True, victory in the war probably muted it quite a bit, but I don’t remember any sentiment like 9/11 with its greater commemorations. And it was the 1960’s and what was going on probably covered up things even more.
Litlebritdifrnt
I was serving in the Royal Navy in Scotland. My parents were visiting me and we had rented a married quarter flat for the week while they visited. I remember watching the BBC news that night with my parents in awe of what was happening. I will never forget it.
Jay
Dog forbid,……..
Jay
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: I agree with Cole. WTF is over-use of healthcare?
Amir Khalid
@Jay:
I wonder, what universe do these people live in, where people go to the doctor for entertainment?
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: “People will overuse healthcare!”
“Umm…have you thought about going to the doctor to get your head examined?”
Anne Laurie
@mrmoshpotato:
Full service blog!
mrmoshpotato
@Anne Laurie: Haha. And that kiddo is sitting on the section replica of Dump’s stupid fucking wall to get a better view.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
What they mean is, “If *everybody* can afford health care, I’ll have to wait longer at my doctor’s office!”
When Massachusetts improved its access for low-income residents, an actual rocket scientist of my acquaintance complained bitterly that she could no longer be sure they’d get an appointment within 24 hours ‘because they’ve had to accept all these welfare cases.’ They are otherwise Good People, quick to help their friends, give generously to charity through their church… but I got shouted down (literally) because they worked hard to get where they are today, and that entitled them to first place in line. (Not-quite-undertone: Was *I* a millionaire? No? Well, point proven!)
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: They don’t see health care as a human right. They see it as Monopoly houses and we are trying to take them away from the rich.
2liberal
what’s the latest on the new site?
mrmoshpotato
@2liberal: Not sure. But the current site did just wish me good luck with my asparagus. And I didn’t even know I had asparagus. So there’s that. :)
Here’s Water girl’s latest update – Today Is Not The Day
?BillinGlendaleCA
@delk: There’s a section of the wall on Wilshire across from the LA County Museum of Art.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh yeah. Pre 9/11 air travel.
I was working in pro sports 94-05 and traveled over 7 months a year, 90% by air. It was fucking fun.
OK one day was. Can’t remember the airport but put my bag on the scan conveyer, walked to the pick up area and reached for my bag. There was a 9mm pistol stuck in the handle of my bag. I came about 2 inches away from picking it up before I saw it. The TSA assholes had put it there to check out the x-ray operator. Of course coming out of the terminal was 2 cops, armed, so I probably would have been shot if I had picked it up. The TSA assholes were not amused by my looking at them and saying “What the ever loving FUCK? And then calling them ASSHOLES.” I wasn’t amused either.
That folks was our government at work. It’s gotten worse.
Just thinking, maybe if someone asked the jackoff republicans exactly who and how has been hurt by say the ACA or fair voting, and shitforbrain’s tariffs, we might just see how deluded they all are and possibly convince some to at least not vote for him again. IOW, how did the Obama administration treat you and how is the trump maladministration treating you….
Sloane Ranger
@CarolDuhart2: I don’t know. Here in the UK it’s Remembrance Day. The Royal family, political leaders, Commonwealth High Commissioners and the Irish Ambassador will be laying wreaths and taking part in a short religious service at the Cenotaph in London followed by a march past of veterans, and this ceremony, on a smaller scale will be taking place at War Memorials in towns and even villages across the nation.
It’s true we remember our dead in all the conflicts that have taken place since but the First World War was where it all started and still plays a major part in the commentary and symbolism of the day.
I think it’s about the psychological hurt done to the nation, rather than just the death toll.
Sloane Ranger
@Amir Khalid: I don’t want to be a downer here but, as a recipient of socialised medicine, we do have issues with people failing to turn up for appointments to such an extent that there is a debate occasionally on whether or not to fine such people.
Also the NHS has started a Social Prescribing initiative. A lot of elderly people, living alone visit the Doctor just to have some social interaction. The idea is to introduce them to suitable organisations who can take over this function.
HeartlandLiberal
We spent a week in West Berlin in 1972. One day my wife, five year old son, and I, took the elevated train across the wall into the Eastern Sector of the city for a day trip. The contrast was beyond belief from the western society we grew up in. You could feel the difference in the air as you walked down streets, went into shops, even public restrooms were shockingly poorly maintained and substandard. As we made our way back to the train station to board and get out of town before dark, as required, we had trouble finding it. We finally asked an East German policeman who was passing by. He just starred at us coldly, and only said: “Ich weiss nicht, Ich weiss nicht.” (I don’t know), and stalked off. Turns out the entrance to board was the doorway in the building right behind him.
different-church-lady
In her world, tyranny and oppresion is exactly what “works” about walls.
Kristine
@Anne Laurie:
Another place to hear the mutterings is the boarding line for your flight. Just listen to the First Class folks grumbling when someone who doesn’t look–to them–like they should be flying in First boards ahead of them for any reason. Money buys first place in line. Every line.
My travel card gets me into Group 2, which is nice I guess? Not really sure what difference it makes–it’s not like the plane leaves any earlier once you’re on board.
different-church-lady
It really infuriates me the way resentment is leveraged for commerce. And related to that: deliberately making something miserable, then charging extra for it to be less miseable.
Joey Maloney
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t want to be a debbie downer about this, but direct your attention to Israel. Total population from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is around 11 million. About 40% of those have no vote, no freedom of speech or movement, no representative government, and subject to arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention. And that’s just what’s officially allowed.
They’ve been kept in that situation for over 50 years, with only sporadic outbreaks of violence.
Then there’s the Arabs living in Israel proper, about 1/8th of the citizen population. They have it much better. They’re only treated like Alabama blacks circa maybe 1970.
Obviously there’s lots of reasons why American conditions are different, but my point is only that if you control the mechanism of the state bureaucracy and the state’s use of force, and you’re willing to make a few bloody examples, it doesn’t take that much to control a large population.
Joey Maloney
@Kristine:
I know, isn’t that some shit? I mean, they still get to sit in their luxurious First Class cabin with better food, better service and free booze and they’re griping because someone juggling an infant or whose body no longer works perfectly get to walk ahead of them to go sit in their cattle car. Sore winners.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ladyraxterinok: I first set foot “behind the Iron Curtain” in July 1989**: Berlin (West & East), Prague, Budapest, & out via Yugoslavia. Nothing I saw as a tourist led me to imagine the system there wouldn’t last another 100 years – when in fact it barely lasted 100 more days.
I retraced my steps the next summer just to see what had changed: Lots. Some things you had to have been there before to notice (e.g., in Prague buskers went from nonexistent under the old red regime, which treated them as “hooligans” & jailed them & broke their instruments & tossed them out of town, to ubiquitous).
On the train from Budapest to Munich for the flight home I shared a compartment with a 30ish woman from Ludwigsburg who worked in a German copy shop, whose auto-mechanic husband was out on sick leave. I retained enough of my college German for an ongoing conversation, in whose course I asked her about ‘herzliche Wilkommen‘ (shorthand for welcoming the East Germans back into the nation). Gott’ns Himmel, did I get an earful about how those lazy good-for-nothing Ossis were sucking up government cash & hardworking Wessis like she & her husband (an auto-mechanic on sick leave) were being shoved to the end of the queue. Something I’d heard with distressing frequency over the years in the blue-collar suburb where I grew up, minus the melanin differential… :^(
—–
** NB On my first trip to Yerp in 1980 I rode an overnight train from the Zoobahnhof in West Berlin to the Hovedbanegård in Copenhagen, obtaining a transit visa en route (and therein hangs a tale!) but never touching down. I will remember to my dying day the line of fluorescent street lamps bathing the east bank of the Spree in “the light of the mind, cold and planetary” (Sylvia Plath, “The Moon and the Yew Tree”) as we crossed the bridge into Ostberlin.
Uncle Cosmo
BTW & FTR, the Fall of the Wall had next to nothing to do with Ronnie Raygun & not much more to do with Gorby (beyond telling Honneker & the other “socialist” bosses they were on their own).
What collapsed the satellite regimes was West German TV: People in the East picked up the broadcasts & saw with their own eyes how people in the West lived (& it was all the more effective for being ordinary programming with no propagandistic purpose) & thought, “Workers’ paradise” my arse, why can’t we live like that!?!? For the great majority it had fuck-all to do with “freedom” & everything to do with “economic covetousness.” As the good churchfolk of the DDR discovered when they strove to promote a “third way” between Western free market & Eastern command economy, & for all their efforts were trampled by their countrymen charging across the border for those sweet capitalist goodies.
Dev Null
@Jay: The Spousal Unit was reading me an essay this morning over breakfast about hospitals suing former patients unable to pay their medical bills. source (trigger warning: FTFVT)
Who wants to trade the devil you know for the devil you don’t? /sarcasm
Dev Null
@Anne Laurie: “I had a lot of advantages in life, was lucky enough to have good mentors, parents who funded my education, and a stable support system, and thanks to all that, I did well by myself. I didn’t build it all myself” …
… said almost no wealthy person ever.
The few people I knew in childhood who have become members of the 1%-er club are afflicted with hubris and lack of self-awareness sufficient to choke several horses.
SectionH
Mr S and I drove from Den Haag to Zagreb and back in October of ’89. Our son was with us. That was some trip. The technical Berlin wall didn’t come down until a few days into November, but the rest of the Iron Curtain was shredded and the roads in Germany and Austria were full of Ladas and Trabants and other funky, clunky Eastern European cars. It was so obvious that major shit was happening.
Mr S majored in International politics/economics at Hopkins and had gone to their school in Bologna, and stayed on after. When he did finally move back to the US, he was known for telling people that the Soviet Union was not going to last. We got more than one phone call from friends in November of ’89 going “Holy Fuck, he was right!”
I remember that we changed 100 USD at the Yugoslavian border and got 3 MILLION Dinars. It was quite the lesson in what real, out of control inflation looks like. I remember Mr S freaking out at a gas station near the Austrian border on the return drive, because the little window that showed the cost of the gas as was being pumped had a set of 000s taped next to the window, and then another set of 000s. And I was like “just put the gas in the car, it’s ok.”
We got a speeding ticket (along with every other vehicle on the road) on the road between Maribor in Slovenia and Klagenfurt, Austria. Fine was 20,000 dinars. I was terrified that we didn’t have any bills that small, and if we offered a 100,000 dinar note, we’d get thrown in jail for attempted bribery. But then I found 20K in smaller notes. We figured out later we’d been fined 45¢. But that saved us from a seriously hefty fine later that day in Austria, so the incident wasn’t just a “funny” story later.
@Uncle Cosmo: Yep, TV, and the rapidly expanding Internet…
I remember the artfully arranged shop windows in Zagreb, in shops that had almost nothing to sell – they were doing their best, but there was almost nothing to sell…
Dev Null
@HeartlandLiberal: At the risk of being glib: thank heavens we maintain our bridges and highways here. I’d snark about well-maintained public bathrooms … but it’s hard enough finding even poorly maintained porta-potties.
PJ
@Uncle Cosmo: your point about most people in the Eastern Bloc longing not so much for freedom of speech but freedom to choose between ten different types of potato chips is accurate, but the fact is that, if Gorbachev had sent in tanks to put down the loosening up that was going on in the satellites, as many in the Politburo wanted (and even Thatcher asked him to do), the Soviet system would have dragged on for years.
Dev Null
@Uncle Cosmo: I can’t find the book on my bookshelf, nor at Amazon, nor are online searches turning up the pointer I’m looking for, but one of the reformist ministers of the last Soviet (or perhaps first Russian) government assigned proximate blame elsewhere: Soviet agriculture was so inefficient that food had to be bought abroad to be sold (with substantial subsidies) at home. These purchases (so the account goes) were financed by huge loans from the West.
When the Warsaw Pact countries started to spin out of the Soviet orbit, Western countries collectively said “no”: if you (Gorbachev) send in troops, forget about food loans.
Faced with the prospect of (sooner-rather-than-later) widespread starvation, Gorbachev backed off.
That’s the story the minister told in his book anyway. I have no idea whether or not that was the primary cause, a partial cause, or just silly; but I’ve been surprised that I’ve never seen the claim mentioned in discussions of “Why the Soviet Union Collapsed” … which isn’t a point in favor of the account. OTOH, it seems odd that a (reformist) Soviet minister’s first-hand account isn’t accorded so much as a polite dismissal.
If and when I find the book I’ll post the minister’s name and the book title.
(Not that it matters, but FWIW the book was translated from Russian; it was not particularly easy going in English.)
Incidentally, this history.com essay hints at the same back-story:
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I had a piece of it that my late lamented friend Danny brought me back. He was over there at the time. I didn’t get to Berlin until 1996, stayed in the eastern part of the city. Still looked like a war zone, 50 years after WWII ended.
Dev Null
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: (and others):
I wonder whether we’re conflating two different friction points here.
OTOneHand, “scary blacks&browns with guns gonna rape our wimmin”.
OTOtherHand, “DemonRat soshulists gonna enslave us and take away our churches and guns and Medicare”, loosely speaking.
Of course they’re related obsessions, but are they one and the same?
“Scary blacks&browns with guns” were a “concern” that Reagan (among others) dealt with back in the 60s & 70s by restricting public carry. In California, via the Mulford Act; nationally, via the Gun Control Act of 1968. Both were supported by the NRA …before the NRA became the radical organization that it is today. Surprisingly (to me) the NRA historically advocated for gun control. (source)
“DemonRat soshulists” is a bumper sticker for an authoritarian ideology supported by a quarter of the population. Sure, it’s an ideology that will use whatever tools it can leverage to achieve and maintain power, but voter disenfranchisement is more efficient: it works “at scale”, vs incidents of non-whites invoking Stand Your Ground laws, which are few and far between.
Call me naive, but I have difficulty imagining a latter day Tulsa race riot … seems much more likely a priori to have happened in the Civil Rights era than now …
… yet it didn’t happen then.
Bull Connor’s dogs and hoses were a far cry from the Tulsa Race Riot, but even so sparked a huge backlash nationwide.
_______________________
That said, asymmetric conflict / stochastic terrorism (in the case of Trump’s defeat at the polls in 2020), or a 2nd Trump Admin running roughshod over state and city governments (in the case of a landslide Trump re-election) seems much more plausible…
My two Euros…
J R in WV
@Jay:
Oh, for sure. Whenever I get bored, or lonely — I go straight away to my family doctor’s office to hang out in the waiting room with everyone. Even if I’m not sick!!!
RIGHT!
Best place in town to get exposed to new and exciting virii and bacteria!! And he is SO compassionate! HAHAHAaa
J R in WV
@Dev Null:
you know one thing very different from the time of the Tulsa Race Riot and similar events and today, even the time of Bull Connor and his thug cops?
The ability to record events as they happen, and show that recording to others later on. TV, News crews with cameras, even newsreels at the movies back before TV. I still remember in the 1950s seeing newsreels before the feature film started.
Dev Null
@J R in WV:
I haven’t read the column, so perhaps I’m being too cynical, but I’m guessing you’re misunderstanding the meaning of “overuse” in the WSJ quote.
You think the writer means “recreational healthcare”; I suspect the writer means “undeserving poorz get healthcare”.
Because healthcare results in better outcomes, and better outcomes should be reserved for those who are deserving.
Sloane Ranger
@J R in WV: See my post at 44 for some of the issues with healthcare free at the point of delivery.
Lonely elderly people do use the Doctor’s surgery as a way to have some social interaction and, because there’s no cost involved, people do fail to turn up for appointments because whatever was wrong with them has sorted itself out in the interim. Both meaning that really sick people have to wait longer.
Having said that, the NHS is much superior for ordinary people than anything you have in the States and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.
ProfDamatu
@Dev Null: I did read (most of) the column – and some of the comments, which was a mistake – and I think you’re partly right. Certainly I believe that lots of the commenters are on that train!
I think, though, that the author is also alluding to the idea that people need “skin in the game,” because supposedly that will disincentivize them from obtaining low-value health care (which is defined as health care that doesn’t really improve outcomes, like hounding a doctor into prescribing antibiotics for your cold, or getting unnecessary scans and tests). So, “overuse.” The problem, of course, which the writer studiously avoids mentioning, is that we actually have research on what happens when you force people to put more “skin in the game” (sooooo much hate for that phrase!). It turns out that people do indeed reduce their spending, but they do so indiscriminately, skipping or postponing both low-value care and high-value care. It’s almost like people don’t have the expertise to know the difference, and healthcare isn’t a traditional market like that for commodities!
Of course, that just scratches the surface of what’s wrong with that op-ed. Blech.
Dev Null
@ProfDamatu: Your analysis is much more thoughtful than mine … when I see “WSJ op-ed”, I run away screaming. With few exceptions, by the time I’ve read to the end of a (WSJ) column I feel in need of a shower.
I’m not familiar with the research you refer to, but the conclusion – that more “skin in the game” results in suboptimal spending decisions which in turn lead to suboptimal outcomes – is intuitively reasonable. eg if you have to choose between food for your kids vs preventive meds, it’s pretty clear which is short-term preferred.
Multiple people (probably Dave Anderson here, but certainly Kevin Drum and others) have pointed out that the wealthy live longer than the poorz, statistically speaking, in part because the wealthy can afford better healthcare, and better healthcare (again, statistically speaking) leads to better outcomes.
As you say, few people have the expertise to make optimal healthcare decisions, but the problem isn’t merely identifying high-value vs. low-value care, it’s also that the marketplace is just about the opposite of a game of “perfect information”. Vox has an on-going series about hidden healthcare costs that is hair-raising.
If you’re a poor, you either don’t have insurance, or perhaps you have one of Trump’s ObamaCare-busting no-value policies with deductibles of gazillions of $ and/or poor coverage.
Either way, you can be stuck with medical debt you simply cannot pay. I had a procedure last year for which I was billed circa $100K … until Medicare knocked the charges down to under $5K. I dare say almost all of us here older than about 55 have had similar experiences.
IMO the healthcare “skin in the game” argument is a sick joke. A writer who focuses on “overuse” rather than the fact that the poorz and the uninsured don’t have consistent access to preventive medicine nor in many cases access to surgery for life-threatening conditions should be examining his’r’her life choices. Seriously, if overuse is the concern, why not focus on policies that address overuse?
In the end, with these people it almost always is about the undeserving poorz, and why they don’t deserve what they can’t afford.
/rant
Dev Null
hooboy … “your comment is awaiting moderation”.
1 link, so it’s not too many links.
no cuss words, not that anyone at BJ would care about cuss words.
Too many words?!?
And it’s a dead comment thread.
I have no idea.
Dev Null
hahaha… my comment on “your comment is awaiting moderation” is …
… awaiting moderation.
Probably this one will too. SMHN…
Dev Null
@J R in WV: Agreed. Participant video coverage seems to me to be a force for moderation.
With apologies for my cluelessness, is that your point?
If not, I welcome enlightenment.
(Not being passive-aggressive, I’m 3 glasses into a French white, so …)
ProfDamatu
@Dev Null: Hey, I agree with you! I wasn’t trying to argue, just to explain another facet of how the right wing tries to argue against helping people afford medical care by hijacking arguments about what are in some cases real problems (I mean, over-prescription of antibiotics really, truly, honestly *is* a problem). I’m well aware that patients lack the information needed to make optimal health care choices – that’s what I meant when I said that healthcare doesn’t work well as a market. Apologies for my unclear phrasing!
Having said that, I believe there probably is some real “overuse” in the medical system, but it’s not in the form of poor people on Medicaid accessing GP visits; rather, it’s in the form of perverse incentives (see fee-for-service) that encourages providers to perform as many procedures/order as many tests as can be justified, because that’s how they get paid. Obviously many, if not most, providers prefer to do only what is needed for their patients, but I’ve definitely run across a few who really pushed the envelope on that.
Dev Null
@ProfDamatu: Didn’t think you were contesting … I’m guessing that we agree on far more than we dispute. I was merely ranting on the unfairness of poorz getting a bill for $100K for a procedure for which I am charged less than $5k.
And other things, but that’s just mind-boggling.
More after dinner.
Dev Null
No need to apologize, your point was clear. I was indicating “agreement by repetition”, if that’s a thing.
In particular: overuse of antibiotics is an existential malpractice … one which is much more serious than recreational overuse of prescription antibiotics.
Yep. Show me the WSJ op-ed ranting against perverse incentives and I’ll recant my views about the uncleanliness of WSJ op-eds.
Well… perhaps.
[…]
Or not.
ProfDamatu
@Dev Null: Yep, we’re in agreement! :-)
Dev Null
@ProfDamatu: Yep!
Taking the opportunity afforded by a reply to correct a mental slip in my previous comment: