Goodbye Lenin
Every generation says this: "People today just have no idea about the way it was." Life experience and the world around us contributes so much to what we are and what we will be. Every generation had it's flash point and it is usually a violent one. For my grandparents it was World War II. For my parents it was Vietnam. For those born after 1980 it was and will be, the World Trade Center, Iraq and Afghanistan. For myself it was the Cold War and a little group of countries a third of the way around the world that most people have never heard of. When I was growing up international politics and perspective was divided into two camps, us versus them. Everything was defined as Western Democracy facing off against Russian and Chinese Communism. Today if you ask most people what Communism means it tends to be defined in the abstract. It gets lumped together with skewed ideas of socialism and is simply presented as a fear word without true definition. Yet for m