By Jimmie Moglia

November 22/23, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  Distance of time or place can reconcile complacent minds to wonderful narratives. Besides, the greatest part of mankind has no other reason for their opinion than they are in fashion.

The man involved in life is sometimes forced to believe without verification, and obliged to choose before he can examine. He is surprised by sudden alterations of the state of things, and changes his mind according to superficial appearances. He is led by others, either because he is indolent, or because he is timid; sometimes he is afraid to know what is right, and sometimes he finds friends or enemies deft and diligent in deceiving him.

For what we may see before our eyes, or reaches our ears at any given moment, is inexplicable without reference to all that has ever been. This interlacing of all contributing threads which necessity weaves into the production of one single phenomenon is a stupefying yet inescapable reality.

Adding to the preceding tribute to obviousness, we are generally delighted with soothing explanations, captivating plots and triumphal outcomes.

A case in point is/are/have been the celebrations of the 30^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A historical event closely followed by the end of Soviet Russia and by the beginning of the end of history, under the soothing protection of the neo-liberal, turbo-capitalistic American-Zionist world empire.

In his related pronouncement, Pompeo, the US secretary of state, linked the collapse of the Berlin wall to America’s victories in the War of Independence and in World War II.

That Pompeo has only a conjectural glimpse of his own meaning, with an added signal talent for ignorance and mendacity, does not diminish the significance of his imaginative historical connections. For they reflect the inner thoughts of the current and eminently parasitic American elite.

Nevertheless, Pompeo’s founding mythology stinks, and more sober minds may realize that the celebrated anniversary was not the beginning of something new, but the last gasp of a (Western) dying system – killed by the disappearance of an enemy who indirectly managed to contain that system’s folly.

It may be heretic to say that the Berlin Wall was as much a Western as a Soviet symbol. And in the current currents of the world it may not really matter, considering that – if polls are true – 95% of the tourists approaching the remnants of the wall know nothing about it. While the rest knows history through the improbable fiction of Hollywood, in which bad communists built the wall to prevent people from escaping into the arms of good capitalists.

I can resist anything but temptation, including the examination of both sides of a coin, especially when most only look at one, and when looking at the other borders with thought-crime.

Readers may remember that, in a masterpiece of gullibility (for a statesman), Gorbachev agreed to the re-unification of Germany, while believing the Americans when they committed themselves – in exchange – not to expand NATO towards the East. We know how it went. Tanks, missiles, American bases and soldiers are within yards of the Russian border. Meanwhile, at the time and in a feat of consummate servility, Gorbachev even appeared in a TV advertisement, blessing the onslaught and the onrush of the Pizza Hut franchise in the Moscow landscape.

In terms of similarly broken promises, and to give a historical setting to the fall of the Berlin wall, we should refer to the aftermath of WWII.