Today Germany is celebrating 25 years of reunification and the media are reminding people in many articles, TV shows and dramas how it really was in East Germany, the GDR, a prison caging 17 million people in and shooting them if they dared try to escape and were caught at it. Quite a few did get away. West Germany had sort of reached a compromise with the situation when Gorbachov made the miracle possible: the removal of that dreadful wall that often separated families and friends and condemned the prisoners to an ideology that is despicable.
But it's only 25 years. That means that at least one adult generation that SUPPORTED that regime is still active, now in legitimized political parties and often in important administrative positions - as civil servants. What do they think? Do they still support the idea that people who find it abhorrent to live in in a dictator system should be shot if they try to escape from it?
Ask why in many parts of the world powerful and ruthless leaders are prepared to sacrifice everything and everybody to their own power and vanity and have well-paid acolytes to keep them in power. Ask why a religious group without any scruples (or even a legitimate aim) is prepared to sacrifice whole nations in order to install an illegal state supposedly based on religious beliefs and fervour. What is it that makes people believe that goals set in the name of (whatever) religion are bound to be legitimate and worthy, who those ratbags who think them up are?
But subversion also exists as perversion, for instance when Roman Catholic worthies molest children, or a popular DJ gets away with paedophile acts in dosens of institutions - presumably with the help of people there to help the weak, not support the corrupt. There seem to be many of this latter type of person in the world. Whatever it is that gave them that repulsive side to their personality (often well hidden under likeability!), it makes no difference. Corruption, coertion and domination of the weak by the strong is an abomination.
I live in Germany. It is now a country where tolerance is written in bold letters, though tolerance is precious to some and a foreign word to others.
When I prophesied Germany reunification in the spring 1989, to a young student of mine, Georg Heckl, he was offended and told me I was talking nonsense. But that same year saw my prophesy come true. Thanks to his disgust I didn't tell anyone else, so he is the only witness to my forecast, and has probably forgotten it and me.
I'm glad Germany found its way to some kind of normality after the "Allies" condemmed it to its division after WWII - showing that their vision of Germany was faulty and their power almighty!
