Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, December 6, 2013

Close Enough

Less than 24 hours and we have Rick "Santorum" comparing the fight to free a people and a nation from the moral stain of apartheid to the GOP's struggle to prevent Americans from buying affordable health insurance.

I made the mistake of wandering into the Yahoo! comments section below the story of Mandela's death.  It was vile.  Mandela was a terrorist!  Except he wasn't a "terrorist" so much as he was an insurgent.  While there were terrorists within the ANC, Mandela focused his resistance to sabotage more than violence and violence was focused on governmental facilities.

But Reagan and Jesse Helms thought he was a terrorist - probably because he was once a Marxist and because, you know...

Mandela's struggle against apartheid can be dismissed by these ignorant yabos, because they don't seem to understand the brutality of Sharpesville, or any of the daily acts of violence that occurred under the apartheid regime.  What has always been Mandela's moral power has been how he transcended the treatment he received at the hands of the state.

Moral transcendence is incredibly rare.  I remember reading how Warrick Dunn came to know and regularly visit the man who killed his mother.

I can't begin to imagine what sort of strength that must take.

But those who dismiss Mandela as a "terrorist" don't even want to try.

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