35 Years Ago Today

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Demolition of the Berlin Wall began.

On the 20th anniversary I wrote a parody of the Bowling for Soup song “1985” in honor of the collapse of European Communism. I seriously want someone to make a music video out of this.

Woo Hoo Hooooo!
Woo Hoo Hooooo!

Honecker built the wall
He thought that he had it all
Head of the GDR, oh
Wife’s in the Politburo
His dreams were smithereens
By October 16
He was the Number One man
What happened to his plan?

He was the head of party
He was the head of state
He shook his Commie fist
Dissidents he sealed their fates
His own SED
Is now the enemy
Miffed by his corrupt life
And nothing, has been…
All right since

Lech Walesa, and Havel
Way before Obama
There was Ronnie and Gorby
And Russians still in Hungary
The Commies from the old school
They think the change is way uncool
They’re all dissatisfied
With 19, 19, 1989

Woo Hoo Hooooo!
(1989)
Woo Hoo Hooooo!

Pozsgay read the Marxist classics
He knew every creed
“Class struggle,” “Labor theory”
“From ability to need”
But Hungary was whammed
Economy was jammed
Thought he’d try a hand
To come up with a new plan

Where’s the full stores
Like the ones in the West?
And what’s with those East German guys
And weekly unrest?
When did Polish dissidents
Get on the TV?
What ever happened
To Comintern, Five Year Plans
(In the streets were)

Walesa, and Havel
Way before Obama
There was Ronnie and Gorby
And Russians still in Hungary
The Commies from the old school
They think the change is way uncool
They’re all dissatisfied
With 19, 19, 1989

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

Ceaucescu hates these times
He wants to make it stop
“When did the Berlin Wall
Become a pile of rocks?
And tell me why did Prague
Surrender to that playwright?
Please make this stop
Stop, STOP”
[sound of rifle cocking]
“Please no more…”

Walesa, and Havel
Way before Obama
There was Ronnie and Gorby
And Russians still in Hungary
The Commies from the old school
They think the change is way uncool
They’re all dissatisfied
With 19, 19, 1989

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

Lech Walesa, and Havel
Way before Obama
There was Ronnie and Gorby
And Russians still in Hungary
The Commies from the old school
They think the change is way uncool
They’re all dissatisfied
With 19, 19, 1989

Day Two of the Trump Administration

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Now that the Election is out of the way, Trump can focus on hitting the ground running next January. I hope there is “shock and awe” as he gets down to the serious work of getting the country back on its feet.

There is a lot of work to be done on important things like trade, immigration, ripping the bloated national government down to the studs, and national security. I bet Trump is going to have a stack of executive orders to sign on Day One to address those urgent national issues.

However, there is also time and slack to pursue secondary objectives meant for delivering some well-deserved justice after the past four years. Call it payback, call it game theory, but hopefully after we re-establish some order we can all be friends again. Not only that but some of things are just the right thing to do, for all Americans.

The best part is that these initiatives have all the right enemies and all can be done mostly through the Executive Branch.

First some nice things:

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Sis Boom Bah

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No, this has nothing to do with exploding sheep.

Linking a Powerline article on the election at Hot Air, Ed Driscoll takes issue with one of its points:

I’ll disagree with my friend John a bit here. There has been a cult of personality around Trump, which is what happens with charismatic figures in politics. There was a cult of personality around Obama too, which Obama purposefully cultivated, and one around Reagan that came together more organically.

Hinderaker doesn’t deny a cult of personality, he just says correctly that personality did not drive Trump’s campaign.  “[H]e ran on the issues. He talked relentlessly and effectively about inflation, the border, and war and peace.” Other candidates with personality cults also ran on issues. The hip, personable Bill Clinton (the last fun Democrat to run for Prez in the general) ran on blaming Bush for the recession, whose root cause was undoubtedly the S&L crisis (in which the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan played a tiny part). The quasi-Messianic Obama ran on War on Terror criticisms and on blaming the Republicans for the Great Recession.

Recall the pep rallies of high school, and their outrageous taunts of the opposing team. People from all factions bring this spirit into politics. It seems that scarcely anyone other than the right applies the other key element: over-the-top aggrandizement of the home team. This looks weird to many leftists and to many conventional schlubs on the right because their approach to their own candidates is more subdued; to them hilarity must directly deprecate the other candidate. As a larger-than-life personality facing outlandish political enemies, Trump is a magnet for pep rally treatment. He is seen in memes as comically heroic, riding an eagle or wearing a superhero outfit or leading dogs and cats to safety away from the clutches of migrant diners. 

The Day After

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Some thoughts on last night

First, I think what happened (so far) is the most optimistic election result that anybody could have hoped for. Electoral college? Popular vote? Senate majority and growing? Probably keep the House with expanded majority? Yes, please. Trump’s margins may shrink and the growth in seats in the Senate and House may stall to something less than spectacular but this was an amazing result.

Second, I bet the Democrats will develop a strange new respect for the filibuster and federalism. Always remember in our system where ambition is to be checked with ambition, the reason you keep the filibuster around is not out of some sentimentality but rather because you will find yourself needing it one day.

Third, on the Powerline podcast last night Steve Heyward speculated if this was the election that finally marked the shift from the traditional media model to podcasts. Maybe though we’ve been waiting for that death for a while. There was a lot of chatter in the past about how social media was going to be the one to torpedo the “SS Traditional Media” (keep in mind the Russian influence hysteria of 2016 centered on their purchase of ads on Facebook).

Fourth, I would imagine this is finally going to mark the fall of the House of Obama and maybe even get him to move out of Kalorama. That’s okay, I’ve heard he was renting anyway.

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