I Tore Down the Berlin Wall With My Own Hands
Now we’re building one in the US? Mr. Trump, tear down …
I really did tear down the Berlin Wall with my hands. With a little help. The night the Wall fell, I was a young American airman stationed in West Berlin. I rushed to Checkpoint Charlie the moment I heard people were streaming through, then spent several days high on adrenaline, watching the world change. My story about that night is just below, but first, some thoughts on how we Americans got to the dark place we find ourselves in today.
The night the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, the world fell.
The Cold War ended, and the globe’s only two superpowers started down a path that would end decades of existential enmity. A tsunami of geopolitical consequences swelled to life, almost without notice. The night after the Fall, nothing looked different.
The night the Wall fell, nobody realized that populism, nationalism, and Great Power politics might return to haunt Europe and the United States.
The night the Wall fell, the idea that an overtly nationalist US president would join forces with a Russian strongman would have sounded absurd.
