How Quickly They Regress

Saturday in front of Berlin's Brandenburg gate, there was a retread of the kind of dope-palooza that one sees rather more frequently in places infected by French social though, such as people in Belgium striking over the cost of living as if the global commodities market was listening.

The usual amusement included home-made sandwich-board signs about how "without weapons sales, the rich could not exist" and "capitalism is failed" as if socialism ever succeeded.

Onward to a new REAL Socialism AT LAST!

This is where it gets funny. The people holding that banner (comforting to some, and menacing to anyone with any brains and memory) – is within 10 feet of the curb where the fence of the Berlin wall whipped around. The banneristas are standing in the narrowest extension of the famous death strip so loved by the happy smurfy people who in large part, were resigned to being imprisoned in and by the thing they're so adamant about making "real" "at last."

It seemed pretty damn real the first time.