At the New Ledger: Thoughts on the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Sorry for forgetting to link this yesterday.
Speaking of Europe, can anyone name one great and positive European contribution to global culture since the end of World War I? After weeks of thought, I’ve come up with just two: the Soviet composers of the 20th Century, and Legos. Sure, I guess it depends on your standards for artistic and cultural merit, but I’ve spent the last month mulling that over and coming up with a nearly blank slate. What also strikes me is the degree to which the rest of the world can’t seem to get enough of the very dumbest that American culture has to offer (and if you can stand Borat‘s more tasteless moments, you’ll see that satirized brilliantly).
It’s true, and also a cliche, that China is rising. But China’s political system and demographics are glass ceilings it might not be able break through without losing plenty of blood. What can you say about a country whose best hope for peaceful change is that the government won’t shoot so many corrupt officials that graft can’t work its gradual liberating magic?
To me, the rising power to watch is India. In every sense I can think of — economic, cultural, legal, military, industrial, demographic, geographic — India is the coiled spring that nobody’s watching, one that could also become an engine of growth and a positive political influence in other regions. Meanwhile, Americans continue to obsess over the approval of regions filled with bitterness over the irreversibility of their decline.
Just a couple of cursory obserations, Mr. Stanton. China’s ill-advised social engineering based on fatally flawed, darwin-driven overpopulation hysteria in the 70s-00s will curtail China’s economic ascendancy just as it peaks. An aging population and a dearth of producers in the near future will drag their soaring economic momentum back to earth.
India’s pagan caste system is concentrating massive amounts of wealth among the Brahman classes while driving underclasses into poverty. Western ideas about prosperity and free markets are on a collision coarse with Hinduism.
The strange thing is that China’s Christian population is burgeoning (70+ million) and Muslims(!) may be the real progressives in India.
The same pagan ideology that caused the ChiComs to embrace the butchery of one-child-per-couple policy may sack these emerging economies if they buy into the new paganism: global warming theory.
Governments that attempt the mythological ‘greening’ of industrial based economies will apply a strangling harness upon their own engines of growth (not to mention national security capabilities).
Europe, as you astutely point out, has contributed nothing but an endless taxonomy of bizarre pagan ideologies that have given the world evolutionism, eugenics, nazism, bolshivism, communism, marxism, socialism, statism, and ____________. There would be no Kim Il Sung or DPRK or human slavery or gulags in Korea without the Europeans’ perverse experiments in paganism, scientism, and utopianism.
The fact that the US head of state is not trumpeting the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago is a disturbing sign of the inroads that European paganism has made into our own country’s social fabric. Is he not glad that communism failed? Can we meaningfully condemn the DPRK’s human rights abuses if we can’t even celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall?
JCS wrote:
So the President of the US visited Berlin during the celebration of 1994, 1999, 2004, right? If Obama had gone this year, would he be off the hook for the golden anniversary celebration in 2014 (assuming he’s still president then)?
Help me understand which anniversaries of milestone events are important? Is the 30th important? How about the 35th or the 45th? Obama did make it to France for the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landing, so is the 65th especially important?
I’m just wondering how this media distraction is supposed to play out exactly. When I first heard that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had gone to represent the United States on the china anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it would make sense since, in addition to Hillary being a well-known and popular figure over there as well as a high-ranking member of the US government, Obama himself was going to the actual China.
positive contributions:
ikea and harry potter
How ironic that you complain about a lack of European cultural offerings using a mode of communication that Europeans invented… the world wide web.
And only Soviet composers? Eisenstein was one of the greatest filmmakers the world has seen!
Al Gore was a European? I should have suspected!
Actually, I thought Battleship Potempkin was a blunt instrument. Maybe it was great when judged by the standards of its time, but then, by that standard, so was “Birth of a Nation.” The best thing about Potempkin was the music, but I’ve already acknowledged the genius of Soviet composers — Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and Stravinsky, who defected to America early on, but I’m feeling generous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History
??
The internet is the vehicle that allows the world wide web to exist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
The invention of the internet was technically very important, but without the world wide web, the internet would never have become the cultural necessity it is today.
Nowadays of course, “internet” and “world wide web” are used interchangeably.
Hence, my use of the word “irony”
Ah, but Eisenstein’s use of modern cinema techniques spawned the whole use of the montage! Where would such American classics such as… Team America be without the montage?
I still think Potemkin still stands out today as a film classic. The Odessa steps sequence is simply mesmerizing, even by today’s standards. Although to a certain extent, it is kinda comparing apples v. oranges. For instance, comparing “Nosferatu 1922” to vampire films of today – like “Let the Right One In”.
Long-time reader and LiNK activist here. I now by curious twist of fate have been living in India for a year and a half.
India is an absolute mess, of that I am certain. The corruption and incompetence of the government officials (and thanks to several decades of aspiring to Nehruvian socialism, there are many, many government officials) are truly mind-boggling. The Indian government is about as bad as a govenrment can get without killing its own people.
That said, the Indian private sector is one of unmatched brilliance, energy, and determination (the overbearing government red tape has ensured that only the strongest private companies could survive).
The future of India, essentially, is a battle between the entrenched government forces that ruin everything they touch, and the alliance of the private sector and the few Indian government officials who are smart enough to see the need for liberalization (Prime Minister Singh).
Ultimately, India will muddle through. That isn’t quite inspiring, but it does portend that India will be better off than those whose future is that of a terrible and violent reckoning.