{"id":72694,"date":"2019-11-27T09:18:37","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T15:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=72694"},"modified":"2019-11-27T09:18:37","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T15:18:37","slug":"tear-down-this-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=72694","title":{"rendered":"Tear Down This Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This week is one of those time when one hopes that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/11\/a-victory-for-democracy-in-hong-kong\/\">the people of Hong Kong know<\/a> what Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa knew, and our &#8220;elites&#8221;, then as now, didn&#8217;t:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>he Hong Kong pro-democracy movement achieved a stunning victory in Sunday\u2019s district-council elections. With turnout exceeding 70 percent, close to 90 percent of the seats went to pro-democracy candidates, who took 17 of the 18 district councils. As the first electoral barometer of public sentiment since protests began in June, the results are a turning point in the conflict that has wracked Hong Kong for the last six months.<br>Though the district councils\u2019 authority is mostly local, they appoint 117 of the 1,200 members of Hong Kong\u2019s Election Committee. Coupled with the roughly 400 opposition members already sitting on the election committee, the additional seats will give the pro-democracy camp much greater sway when the next chief executive of Hong Kong is selected in 2022. The current chief executive, Carrie Lam, has denounced this year\u2019s protests and remained staunchly on the side of Beijing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Watching how squarely our &#8220;elites&#8221; have come down , not so much &#8220;on Beijing&#8217;s side&#8221; as &#8220;trying not to cheese off the benevolent dictors&#8221; reminds me of life in the late seventies, when &#8220;detente&#8221; so frequently overrode any desire to call out the Soviets for what they actually were.  It remained up to the locals &#8211; the Poles, Estonians, Czechs &#8211; and dissidents here at home, the &#8220;crazies&#8221; and &#8220;McCarthyite Cold Warriors&#8221;, to remind the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the idea that the world would go from the squashing of <em>Solidarity <\/em>in 1980 to the fall of the Wall within ten years was almost as unthinkable as the idea of calling for a landing on the moon by 1970 in 1960.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it seems today.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep your fingers crossed. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week is one of those time when one hopes that the people of Hong Kong know what Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa knew, and our &#8220;elites&#8221;, then as now, didn&#8217;t: he Hong Kong pro-democracy movement achieved a stunning victory in Sunday\u2019s district-council elections. With turnout exceeding 70 percent, close to 90 percent of the seats went to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72694","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=72694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72709,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72694\/revisions\/72709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}