Tear Down The Wall

The hardest thing that I have grappled with over the course of my adult life is the struggle to remain open-minded. I idealised living a certain way, but at the same time, thinking and wondering in many directions. Some kind of purposeful wanderer. But always pretty closed-minded to other directions once I was on a path. Long-term focus not being my strong suit. A lot of blurred living came about with the changes in direction that occurred during the early course of my life. But I was rarely open-minded for long periods of time.

1980 changed all of that. Or more exactly, I embraced closed-mindedness on a single path.

I remember the first time I was able to vote in a presidential election in 1980. I voted for the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. I did it mostly in reaction to how Jimmy Carter’s diplomacy went south during the Iran hostage crisis. I remember vividly the daily news reports with their continuous countdown of how many days the hostages had been in captivity. 1, 2, 3, 4,…444 days. Then the botched rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw (or Operation Evening Light) that attempted to rescue the hostages from the U.S. Embassy on April 24th of 1980. The attempt was aborted when three helicopters were damaged or forced to return to the USS Nimitz by a sandstorm. Eight American servicemen died. How could this backwards country like Iran, hold this great country of ours in check? Ronald Reagan seemed to be the glimmer of hope that was needed to make us proud of our country again. Move us past the shame of the Nixon Watergate scandal, the Viet Nam conflict and disco music.

I was a converted Republican.

I had a daughter and a son during the Reagan administration that I wanted to be raised with the protection and the safety and the morals that the Republican’s represented to me at that time. They offered me a message of hope. It felt like the world was finally stabilizing. It seemed defined when Ronald Regan stood in front of the Berlin Wall, and proclaimed his beliefs, our countries beliefs, that "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality … for it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” The “wall” seemed much more than just the Berlin Wall. It was the symbolic destruction of the terrible thought that we were on the verge of blowing the world apart. I could feel the pull of hope on my life.

We have heard a lot about hope lately, and I reflect on how powerful a pull that wishing for that can have on the soul. It also causes me to reflect on a lot of the pain that came with that hope during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush eras. We shut out the mentally ill in our society and turned them out in the streets. We judged and looked away from many of the society that needed the most help. We thought we could bully bad parents into caring for their children. We bullied the world. Greed was king and we created a selfish "Me" generation.

I was remember feeling actually devastated when George H. W. Bush lost the election to Bill Clinton. It was beyond belief to me that people would accept that type of character to lead this country. I believed what Phil Gramm, a Senator from Texas said when asked what would result if Clinton's proposals were passed. "People will be hunting Democrats with dogs by the end of the century."

Where are the "Clinton-hounds, the Bill-dogs?"

But, in hindsight, the world didn’t end. Short of a confusing new definition for “is”, Clinton left the country pretty well off. The second Bush, I believe tried, but he held such a narrow ideology, he was doomed to fail, especially, with building any kind of cooperation across this diverse country of ours.

What the second Bush left me with--gratefully--was a freedom to think as an independent. To "tear down the walls" of closed-mindedness. 30 years coming, I now question everything like a 2-year-old.

I still love this exchange:
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true." --Bill Clinton at his deposition.