Ostalgie

Folks will get nostalgic over anything.

Even the depredations, degradations and debilitation under communism.

That's one hotel I'll leave off my list should I ever visit Berlin.

(would anyone be surprised that the AP story takes a mostly approving tone?)

Time to trot out that Zappa quote:

...I've also talked about the End of the World being a question of whether it's going to be by fire, ice, paperwork, or nostalgia. And there's a good chance that it's going to be nostalgia because the distance between the event and the nostalgia for the even has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter with each nostalgia cycle. So, projecting into the future, you could get to a point where you would take a step and be so nostalgic for that point where you would take a step and be so nostalgic for that step you just took that you would literally freeze in your tracks to experience the nostalgize of the last step, or the last word, or your last whatever. The world just comes to a halt - remembering.

Found the interview that quote was taken from (dating from Oct 1988), not sure that Zappa would be a big fan of the internet or blogosphere, either that or he'd be one of the most prolific bloggers around, one or the other, really.

Another quote from the same interview,

I don't know whether anybody truly wants to be interested in a campaign for two years, and I think that's one of the reasons why they run them for two years. Because they want to numb the electorate. They want to keep the voter turn-out low. If you keep the voter turn-out low, then you realize that the only people who have managed to stay interested long enough have to be weird. The average guy, who just wants to exercise his democratic right to vote, he's so turned off by the whole thing. He's seen these guys over and over, he's heard the lies, he's looked at it and just gone "Yuck!" And now it's not a privilege to vote. It's a horrible obligation and they don't even want to know about it. And especially when you tell them that the election's already over, then why should they bother? Why should they leave their job or go, especially on the East Coast when it's cold, to someplace in November to pull a handle or poke a hole in a piece of paper? Who cares? The election's over. They want you to believe that.

Still don't particularly like his music, and he says plenty in the interview I find disagreeable, but he says it in a compelling manner, so read the whole thing.