Berlin Wall = Epiphany

One evening in 1967 when I was 16, I remember watching Walter Cronkite CBS news when he shared a story of a 16 year old boy who had tried that day to escape from East Germany (Communist) to West Germany (Democracy) by crawling under the barbed wire fence. You see, in some places along the border between the two countries, the wall was composed of barbed wire. That was how the Germans lived, with that obvious division of their country.

Unfortunately, he was spotted by one or more of the East German guards who promptly shot him when he was halfway across. But of course, they didn't kill him. So he laid there crying out for help while bystanders (whoever they were) stood by and watched him slowly bleed to death, knowing they would end up in the same condition if they tried to help him.

As I listened to Cronkite relay this story, I was immediately transported to that field where I could feel the grass under my body and the barbed wire above me, grabbing at my clothes, slowing me up. He was my age and now he was dead. This story hit me really hard, I was crying and I was very vocal about how I felt saying to the room at large, "The world is going to hell (you need to understand my parent's had a no-swearing-allowed home)."

My dad immediately proceeded to yell at me, saying I didn't know what I was talking about and I had no business talking like that. He tried to shut me up while insisting I believe his particular version of the establishment's dogma (that's how we thought back then). Well, I was having none of it then and am having none of it now. We fought pretty much every night about whatever I said, if he said, "Black", I said "White", that's just the kind of dysfunctional relationship we had.

This morning when I heard my husband say it was the 20th anniversary of Berlin Wall being destroyed, today (this is where the epiphany comes in) I realized that single event had been the turning point for me in becoming my own person. From that point on I believed what I believed and followed my own heart. In fact, I would go so far as to say if my parents supported something (like Nixon for President) my views would be at the opposite end of the spectrum and still are. I realized that as an American I was getting fed just as much propaganda as any communist country and wasn't going to sit back and accept that.

So why didn't our history books cover our disgusting and unforgiveable treatment of non-Caucasian races like the Japanese internment camps for instance, why didn't our history lessons cover our complete and total annihilation of Native Americans, why didn't our history professors admit that our form of democracy wasn't "invented" by our forefathers but instead they pirated the same approach to government that was used by those same Native Americans who had been living here for countless years before we intruded upon their territory. The list goes on and on. Are kids today being told the whole truth, in all it's garish ugliness?

I watch so many of the young people of today sit back and accept whatever pablum they're given by the press and/or their religious leaders. Bad things come to those who meekly accept and don't question. Bad things that can take all sorts of forms. I hope I'm wrong and there's more backbone out there than is obvious.