{"id":48971,"date":"2014-11-10T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48971"},"modified":"2014-11-10T06:49:58","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T12:49:58","slug":"48971","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48971","title":{"rendered":"The Muted Celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was 25 years ago yesterday that the Berlin Wall fell.<\/p>\n<p>I was in a not-so-great place in November of 1989. \u00a0But I watched the news &#8211; as I&#8217;d been watching the gathering disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, and of the &#8220;Second World&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>And seeing the stories of the swirling vortex of history into which Communism was falling&#8230;:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3bN9ZRj3NBs\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;even I, a simple nightclub DJ from northeast Minneapolis, knew something big was going on.<\/p>\n<p>Even today, watching the footage, and watching Germans celebrating, I feel moved. \u00a0It was one of the most amazing events of my lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I had a dog in the fight:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YtYdjbpBk6A\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That dog was, of course, freedom. \u00a0I was on the side that supported it.<\/p>\n<p>For years, though, the mainstream media always seemed torn about the fall of the wall, the fall of communism. \u00a0I remember in 1992, Tom Brokaw reporting on economic problems in Poland &#8211; after <em>three whole years\u00a0of freedom<\/em>, after 45 in slavery &#8211; and solemnly declaring that Eastern Europe&#8217;s experiment with economic freedom was a failure.<\/p>\n<p>I wondered if it was merely myopia. \u00a0But no &#8211; it seems the American media had trouble processing the fall of the Wall because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onthemedia.org\/story\/our-anniversaries-ourselves-25-years-after-berlin-wall\/\">they largely supported the wrong side<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was 25 years ago yesterday that the Berlin Wall fell. I was in a not-so-great place in November of 1989. \u00a0But I watched the news &#8211; as I&#8217;d been watching the gathering disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, and of the &#8220;Second World&#8221;. And seeing the stories of the swirling vortex of history into which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48971"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48982,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48971\/revisions\/48982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}