Lew: your article, conflating the current demonstrations in Egypt with the collapse of the Soviet Union, brought to mind the very powerful image of the Berlin Wall being torn down by the German people. What was almost as powerful as that picture of Wang-Wei Lin peacefully confronting those faceless tanks in Tiananmen Square, was the picture of East German soldiers standing by and watching the wall being dismantled. Men who, a day earlier, would have obediently shot any East Berliner trying to scale this monstrosity, were suddenly neutralized by a force too powerful for them to resist. (“And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”)

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