Different Contexts for the Berlin Wall, or Where is Ronald Reagan?
In How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America, (University of California Press, 2012), historian Jon Wiener visits Cold War monuments, memorials, and museums across the United States to find out how the era is being remembered. In an engaging travelogue that takes readers to sites such as the life-size recreation of Berlin’s “Checkpoint Charlie” at the Reagan Library and exhibits about “Sgt. Elvis,” America’s most famous Cold War veteran, Wiener discovers that the Cold War isn’t being remembered. It’s been forgotten. Pieces of the Berlin Wall are on display at Microsoft, the Reagan Library, and even a major event on the LA strip. There’s one question, though. Where’s the mention of Ronald Reagan and his role in “tearing down” the Berlin Wall? This excerpt is taken from chapter 1, “Hippie Day at the Reagan Library.”
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When the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, announced it would hold a “hippie contest” one Saturday, I wondered what it would take to win. Dress in tie-dye and refuse to get a job? Put on bell-bottoms, take LSD, and jump out the window? Grow long hair and give the finger to your country, while decent kids were risking their lives defending freedom thousands of miles away?
The hippie contest was part of a daylong “fun-in” (their term) to celebrate the opening of an exhibit titled “Back to the 60s.” As visitors went through the library gates that morning into the beautiful tree-lined courtyard, we were greeted by a kindly woman giving out free samples of Ding Dongs (a Twinkie-like confection). Frisbees were also being handed out, bearing the motto “Back to the 60s, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.” Is that really what it was like in the sixties—free frisbees and Ding Dongs for everyone? Handed out by Reagan’s people?
According to conservative ideology, victory in the Cold War was the work of one man above all others: Ronald Reagan. Alone among presidents, he refused to accept the continued existence of the USSR. That is the argument John Gaddis makes in The Cold War, the definitive statement of the conservative interpretation. Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” That’s why he sought to “hasten [its] disintegration.”
Read more: http://www.utne.com/arts-culture/the-berlin-wall-ronald-reagan-ze0z1304zwar.aspx#ixzz2QpMCKWRQ
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