11.28.11

Today, I made over 50 Facebook posts re: the occupation. I could only guess at how many posts I read, then read or viewed attachments. In the last two months plus, my email archive went from it's 10 year high of 2,000 to just shy of 5,000. 2,000 over a decade. 3,000 in 10 weeks. That's what democracy looks like.

So much of it is redundant or inapplicable, but, as a metric of the movement, there it is. I haven't studied this hard or learned this much since my days studying international political science, as the Berlin Wall crumbled.

It was the late 80's. The Cold War had raged and smoldered for four decades. Now, the once formidable USSR was a shattered hull. My father spent his career in the Air Force fighting the Cold War and yes, it was a real fight involving real people from before Korea, thru Vietnam, and in some regards, right up until today.

When I was in college, the first time, the scales fell from my eyes dramatically under the tutelage of the wisest men I have ever met - a former state official from Liberia, who narrowly escaped with his life during a coup but returned to his country, with immanent threat of death, to save both his family and, by helping the junta reorganize the functions of the state, save his country, taught me about African politics; a teacher of US / Soviet foreign policy, and (nuclear) arms control and reduction, who had actually participated in the negotiation of the START Treaty, escorted us thru the facilities at Oak Ridge; a gentleman who held his biases better than anyone I have ever known showed me how colonialism absolutely screwed up the world, and why / how it continues to this day.

Where I went to college, an obscure yet elite Southern University, we had a thing called comps to deal with before graduating. "Comps" was short for Comprehensives, as in a few questions re: your academic career, as in comprehensive questions about everything you have studied during the four years your major has been involved. For me, this was complex.

Everything I had studied boiled down to the Cold War, US / Soviet relations c. December, 1989. At some point, my coursework had covered every aspect of US history, the Constitution and political process the major international struggle of the post WW II age and everything that led up to it over the preceeding 500 years. Seriously, it was a lot for a 20 something to deal with at that.

I began condensing notes from spiral notebooks, each dedicated to a course, some dating back 4 years. At that point, the oldest notebooks were almost 20% as old as I was. Every friend I had was asked to share notes, or asked me to share notes, or a fraternity had a hoard of old questions, professor specific. From this chaos, I distilled 45 pages of concise outline from the beginning of the Enlightenment thru present day, with a focus on the past 40 years.

Then the Wall came down, suddenly. When I first caught wind of it, I was dumbstruck. "So what the fuck am I supposed to do now?" Everything I had studied, as if in a laboratory, had reached its' final conclusion, the experiment had delivered its' results. The world we knew yesterday no longer existed. I went to my prof who had taught arms control, a man I greatly admired, had taught me several classes, and was involved in the department's comp committee. "What shall I do?" I pleaded. "Watch CNN 6 hours a day and study your notes. You'll be fine." was his laisse faire answer. So, I did.

The day came. I arrived, as instructed, 15 minutes before the exam was to commence, with 10 "blue books" (thin, composition books) in hand, just in case I had something to say. As it was "off" in the semester schedule, I was comping in December, there were fewer than a dozen of us, all nervous, all clamoring about high points we had studied together and the details only a few trivia traps remembered. The eldest member of the polisci department walked into the exam room, across from his office, and announced he would be proctoring the exam. We had as much time as we liked. There would be coffee available at all times. And, he might dissapear at times for a smoke. He was 80 something at the time.

The instructions were simple. I had eight questions. The first four were in re: to the United States (Constitution, Electoral History, Quantitative Presidential Blah Blah Blah) of which we had to answer two. The second four were in re: to international relations, my concentration, and none were optional, all dealt with US / Soviet relations in some way. I spent six hours writing 32 pages. I passed. The only "grades" given were pass, fail, and honors. Iwas grateful.

Thanks for reading. May tomorrow be a day we can't imagine today.