Getting ready to watch the World Cup draw, the commentators dove right into Mandela saying he was perhaps "greatest humanitarian who ever lived" and "it's like the world lost a father."
That's when my objective lenses go on autopilot.
I'm not easily given into hyperbole so I'll leave that up to, well, just about every other news or blog site.
However, there are other views about Mandela.
Look up the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa.
Whites don't live in heavily guarded neighborhoods in houses made of bullet-resistant materials and have panic rooms surrounded by 10 foot vehicle-resistant walls topped by broken glass and iron spikes for nothing. The security team at the "neighborhood" where one of my friends lives in Northern Cape is very heavily armed and uses physical security somewhat akin to an American embassy. The quick reaction force that responds to emergency calls is armed with automatic rifles, grenades, and GPMGs.
Mandela is lauded for shit he quite literally doesn't deserve credit for. The transition didn't turn into a government orchestrated bloodbath because whites were very heavily armed and made up nearly the entirety of the SADF. The Tripartite also needed whites to stay so their wealth could be expropriated. Mandela was smart enough to see that you can't slaughter the golden goose."
As usual, it's all about Obama.
Anyway, I have to be careful here. I don't want to be in a myopic 'yeah but Thomas Jefferson owned slaves' situation.
That's when my objective lenses go on autopilot.
I'm not easily given into hyperbole so I'll leave that up to, well, just about every other news or blog site.
However, there are other views about Mandela.
"Mandela is highly overrated by his fan club (and by liberals in general), but I will give him credit for not going down the path of the murderers and thugs in other African countriesHe, and the state, didn't need to, the black populace is doing it for him. He can sit back, let violent murderous mobs accost, rob, rape, and murder whites, loot white owned farms after murdering the owners and then sit back, have a show trial and then let the guys out after a few months to murder again.
Look up the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa.
Whites don't live in heavily guarded neighborhoods in houses made of bullet-resistant materials and have panic rooms surrounded by 10 foot vehicle-resistant walls topped by broken glass and iron spikes for nothing. The security team at the "neighborhood" where one of my friends lives in Northern Cape is very heavily armed and uses physical security somewhat akin to an American embassy. The quick reaction force that responds to emergency calls is armed with automatic rifles, grenades, and GPMGs.
Mandela is lauded for shit he quite literally doesn't deserve credit for. The transition didn't turn into a government orchestrated bloodbath because whites were very heavily armed and made up nearly the entirety of the SADF. The Tripartite also needed whites to stay so their wealth could be expropriated. Mandela was smart enough to see that you can't slaughter the golden goose."
More comments:
"For all the hagiography that this week will bring, the most appropriate epitaph for Mandela and his works is thus:
"It could have been worse."
For that matter it fits pretty well as a send-off for the Apartheid regime.
As evil as Apartheid was, communism was much worse. It is not right to dismiss Mandela's support for communism as a merely aesthetic or un-important flaw, not when communism claimed so many nations, liberties, and individuals as its victims. There was, in fact, a model for the trajectory of Mandela's insurrection in Africa: former Rhodesia, which had a similarly unjust but functional regime of discriminatory liberal democracy. This regime was of course replaced by Mugabe's junta: much worse for both blacks and whites than its predecessor, and cheered on by the ANC.
This is the future that awaited a Soviet- and Cuban-backed ANC-ruled S Africa in the 80s, not the moderate government which took power after the fall of the USSR. Avoiding such a system does not mean supporting the status quo. Indeed, the tragedy of Apartheid was how unnecessary it was; Cape Colony and its multiracial qualified franchise had put the lie in the idea that racial restrictions were necessary to maintain a stable, liberal republic decades prior to Apartheid's institution. As S Africa grows poor, nasty, and brutish, more will recognize that it could have been worse -- and after the current Mandela craze is over, some might understand that it could have (and should have) been better."
"For all the hagiography that this week will bring, the most appropriate epitaph for Mandela and his works is thus:
"It could have been worse."
For that matter it fits pretty well as a send-off for the Apartheid regime.
As evil as Apartheid was, communism was much worse. It is not right to dismiss Mandela's support for communism as a merely aesthetic or un-important flaw, not when communism claimed so many nations, liberties, and individuals as its victims. There was, in fact, a model for the trajectory of Mandela's insurrection in Africa: former Rhodesia, which had a similarly unjust but functional regime of discriminatory liberal democracy. This regime was of course replaced by Mugabe's junta: much worse for both blacks and whites than its predecessor, and cheered on by the ANC.
This is the future that awaited a Soviet- and Cuban-backed ANC-ruled S Africa in the 80s, not the moderate government which took power after the fall of the USSR. Avoiding such a system does not mean supporting the status quo. Indeed, the tragedy of Apartheid was how unnecessary it was; Cape Colony and its multiracial qualified franchise had put the lie in the idea that racial restrictions were necessary to maintain a stable, liberal republic decades prior to Apartheid's institution. As S Africa grows poor, nasty, and brutish, more will recognize that it could have been worse -- and after the current Mandela craze is over, some might understand that it could have (and should have) been better."
As usual, it's all about Obama.
Anyway, I have to be careful here. I don't want to be in a myopic 'yeah but Thomas Jefferson owned slaves' situation.
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