Perspective

These are my memories. We all know that memory can be a tricky construct. That is my only disclaimer.



A recent tweet about "Great Sports Movies" got me thinking about what it was like growing up on the tail-end of the cold war. To my way of thinking, anyone with a complete soul has to count "Miracle" as the best sports movie ever made.  I think this opinion is born--not from any actual knowledge of film making but, rather--from living during that time. At least that is the case for me.



When I was young, I spent a lot of time--outside of a stint in foster care--with my grandma and my great grandparents (my Oma and Opa). I watched a lot of news because they watched a lot of news. In fact, it was almost the only time the TV was on in the house. As such, I grew up fearing a few things--most notably the USSR. I recall having a deep fear that "they" would randomly send a nuclear strike against the US and we'd all be vaporized in our beds. (In the interest of full disclosure, I was also terribly frightened of being abducted by pirates so. . . a grain of salt might be necessary) I had this vague sense that there was a whole country of people who hated me because I was an American and had all these "freedoms" they would never have. I wondered about what it would be like to starve because grocery store selves were--as the nightly news helpfully displayed--empty. I thought about how annoying it would be to have to worry that my government was tapping my phones. I was amazed and pleased when people actually completed a successful defection from such onerous lives.



And then the world began to change. In 1980, a group of college kids beat the "unbeatable" Soviet hockey team. For me, that was the beginning of the dissolution of fear. In 1982 Samantha Smith wrote to General Secretary Yuri Andropov and an American school girl visited the Soviet Union. I remember thinking she was very brave and worrying that "they" would not let her leave--which, looking back, was fairly silly. Then, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet President and the news hour was filled with talking points on Perestroika and Glasnost. By this point, most of my deeply held fears about nuclear annihilation were long forgotten. Finally--in November of 1989--as I watched the Berlin Wall crumble under the hammers of the Berliners (deeply saddened that my Opa did not live to see his country symbolically reunited), I felt that maybe--just maybe--democracy was going to "win the day" in world politics. I was a senior in high school at the time and I had a fairly one-dimensional view of world politics despite my rabid news consumption.



As the years have passed, and I've become a more knowledgeable consumer of news and information, I've come to the realization that most of my childhood fears were completely unfounded. But I have often thought about how my thoughts and fears in that time were molded by the news I was consuming on the daily.



But here's the thing: without the constant barrage of "the Soviets are bad" and "Democracy must win" messaging of the day, would the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" have even been a thing? Would it have merely been a blip on the map of sports history? Would a movie have even been a viable option? I'm thinking not but I don't really know.



Some people argue that we--from a nationalistic standpoint--need a clear "enemy" in order to solidify our collective will and to foster patriotism. These same people might point to how large and diverse we are as a nation as a rationale for needing said enemy. When I look back on the events of my life, I can see that these things seem to be true. I'm not saying they are good, moral, honorable, or humanistic. They just seem to be true. I wonder. . . . in another 40 years. . . if we'll be in the same place we've been since WWII? I feel like we are stuck as a nation. . . and. . . I think it's a damned shame.