Nelson Mandela has died

[JanS]

A sad, sad day for South Africa…for the world.

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[wakeflood]

Agreed.

Makes you wonder sometimes why ideas supported by pluralities and sometimes significant majorities don’t get traction until a Mandela, Walesa, King Jr., etc. step to the fore.

Is it simply that media requires a figurehead to promote because ideas are just too ethereal to grasp? And yet we have memes aplenty. So that can’t be it. Is it the inherent power of these individuals the ability to bring an already prevalent idea and give it meaning or make tangible?

Does apartheid end without Mandela? Does LBJ push the Civil Rights Act without MLK?

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[miws]

:-(

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[JayDee]

At 95 years old he deserves his final rest. And he is not just a figurehead–would you pass up freedom from prison for years because others were not yet free and so stay in prison for 30+ years? I would not and I am not alone…I would say: “Be Strong Brothers….See you on the outside” And therein is where his authority lay: He took the worst the regime offered, remained true, and when free did not become a despot or a Mugabe. So South Africa has a future thanks to this one man.

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[wakeflood]

Hey JayDee, I should clarify. I absolutely wasn’t trying to call Mandela (nor any of the others I mentioned) a figurehead. They were most certainly more than that, as I indicated later in the paragraph.

I was simply attempting to ponder if the MEDIA requires some specific individual to act as the face of a movement for the rest of the “Hero’s Journey” to play out? No face of the movement, no ratings/hits, etc.

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[JoB]

wake..

either way.. we have been very lucky to have so many fine men and women speak out on the issues of our day in a way that resonated with people’s hearts..

they shaped my childhood, young adulthood, adulthood and are still influencing my old age.

i feel fortunate ..

to risk being a cliche…

the coming of the age of Aquarius?..

these people exemplify what that phrase meant to me

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[wakeflood]

JoB, I agree that those you mention exemplified the meaning of the “age…” But I gotta’ tell you, as one at the very tail end of the Boomers, that we failed miserably.

We sold out. We caved. We became the man. And we lost a huge opportunity. History will not judge us kindly.

To wit:

Global Climate Change

Huge and growing economic inequality fueled by lack of shame and exaltation of greed

Wars of choice

The solidification of the “X-Industrial Complexes”

The list goes on.

Shame on us. We took a moment of tremendous opportunity and turned it into a selfish, self-centered orgy.

And yes, I’m generalizing. And yes, I realize that’s not fair to those who fought bravely against this zeitgeist. But we pacified ourselves with “stuff” and shrugged our shoulders and looked the other way on the main. That’s on us.

I was only 7yrs. old when Bobby Kennedy was killed and I distinctly remember losing hope for our generation that day. I didn’t have the age or structural knowledge of how things really worked to underpin that thought with anything. But I felt it in my gut then. And it still bothers me today.

I re-read this short speech he gave on Labor Day before he passed and it brings it all home. Our lost opportunity.

Robert Kennedy, 1968

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product… if we should judge America by that — counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

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[wakeflood]

We’ve had 45yrs. to improve on these things that make us proud to be Americans.

How would you all grade us?

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[babalou]

nelson mandela’s experience makes me embarrassed to complain about traffic and comcast

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[charlabob]

Wakeflood, thank you for the reminders. I’m a little bit older but not at all wiser. However, I’ll sleep when I’m dead (thank you, WZ) and, until then, I’ll keep fighting. So will we all.

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[JoB]

wake..

i agree that we failed.

i don’t know that we sold out so much as were blindsided and disillusioned in our loss

I was old enough to be participating as a young adult when Bobby was killed

and that death more than any other

perhaps because it was the concluding shot

really took the wind out of our sails..

it was too hard .. just too hard

i have never stopped speaking out

i was going to say that i stopped acting out..

but after writing all of my exceptions i realized that i never stopped…

i redirected and focused my efforts ..

but i didn’t stop

One thing i see about us boomers is that as a group we are getting our strength back

our willingness to do battle.. so to speak

refocusing as a generation.. inspiring our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren to demand more

i don’t think we are done.

trashing our pensions was a really stupid move on the part of the powers that be

i am hoping it is a fatally stupid move.

Our kids are really really pissed off ;)

yes.. i still have hope

not for the society that we hoped to build

i think that dream is gone

but for helping the pendulum swing back in the other direction

and perhaps move with more speed than anticipated by all

all you have to do is look around you to see that growing interest in sustainability…

you guys are doing us old hippies proud :)

I think Charla nailed it when she said

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead (thank you, WZ) and, until then, I’ll keep fighting. So will we all.”

so say we all

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[JoB]

Randi Rhodes tells it like she sees it

she is one smart woman

smart women and men like her give me hope for our future

http://www.randirhodes.com/articles/daily-blog-380723/on-todays-show-fri-dec-6-11887644/

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[wakeflood]

JoB, I agree that we can take heart in the current generation’s potential energy….but I have also seen apathy fueled by their disgust of the state we put things in. That scares me.

Russel Brand- Dont Vote! John Mayer- waiting for the World to Change??

Lets hope that bifurcation and the Chaos principles work in our favor and the poles flip quickly this time!!

Regardless, we WILL keep working for change cuz as you say we ain’t done yet. Rage against the dying of the light, right?

As Mandela said, don’t measure me by how often I fell, but by how many times I got back up. (Paraphrase)

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[wakeflood]

JoB, the more I think about it, the true believers DID give a good effort but were overwhelmed by the posers and those who were merely taking advantage of what they could.

In the end, that plurality was happy to talk the talk they couldn’t walk. Too many deals cut, too many principles sacrificed, too much lipservice, too much ME when the world needed US.

We needed Albert Schweitzer on steroids and we got Steve Jobs and Prosperity Theology.

Let’s talk about THAT with the younger folks. Ideals are great but if when the going gets tough, you take the easy road, you end up here. And we made it an even higher hill to climb than it should have been.

Onward.

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[JoB]

i read a lot of history

especially the feminist history which has recently become more available

walking the walk has never been easy

i would add too

that we expect too much from our role models

they can’t be effective at just one thing..

they can’t have faults

they have to be super role models free of any perceived faults

or we dismiss them as flawed :(

we expect too much

of ourselves as well :(

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[wakeflood]

True. But the generation before us looked at the biggest threat to the world and took it on. Their kids looked at theirs and took a pass…

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[JoB]

wake..

it wasn’t all sex drugs and rock and roll

there was a lot of hard work that prefaced that pass you think we took

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[wakeflood]

And that hard work yielded what, exactly? What did we accomplish when we got the keys to the car?

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[wakeflood]

The generation before us won a world war, paid to put themselves through school, took us to the moon, created computers that changed the world and a national highway system second to none.

We made pollution an issue worth paying attention to. But we split the baby every time something major needed to change.

We made consumerism the state religion, not that it needed much help but we sure didn’t divert it. We took faith in what govt could accomplish and tore it asunder just a few years after it took us to the moon and passed civil rights legislation.

We may have worked hard but we managed to leave a humongous mess to clean up. Like I said, huge missed opportunity. And one that leaves me cold.

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[JoB]

wake..

we passed the ERA

we didn’t get it ratified.. but we did get it passed

we pushed for and saw passed the civil rights act

which didn’t go far enough but did set legal precedence

we passed voting rights laws which are only now being eroded

much of what younger people think are rights that have only recently been taken away from them were in fact not available to me as a young person…

we fought for those.

i was a young adult during the decade that followed Bobby Kennedy’s death..

the decade when young people realized they weren’t going to be able to work just through the system…

the decade when anger built to such a point that i personally prepared for the revolution i was pretty sure was going to happen…

i acquired an FBI file that is still not available in public records searches for spending the night in the kitchen arguing with a now very famous SDI leader about the role of violent conflict in implementing change…

i saw him not that long ago and age has mellowed him.. we are now in agreement :)

some of us helped returning viet-nam vets re-establish their lives.. and sometimes we failed.

some of us got very involved in political organization

and yes.. we got on with our lives

we raised families.. we pursued careers…

if i was to cite one thing we accomplished

i would say that we demonstrated .. and quietly lived.. possibilities

was it enough? No, it wasn’t.

You can’t imagine how sick at heart i became when the backlash to women’s rights included my own daughter who thought it wasn’t that important to pass the ERA because women had already secured equality… if only…

it wasn’t enough

but it was something

something to build on

something i try to build on every day

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[wakeflood]

And this leads me to ask why we would expect the next generations to learn from our mistakes?

In my experience its rare to learn from your own, much less someone else’s.

My hope is that the natural reaction to reject your parent’s ways manifests in positive change and mindful courage to fix what is the broken toy that we’re tossing them with a casual, “knock yourself out”.

But I wouldn’t blame them if they flipped us the bird and took another bong hit either.

Alright, I would blame them but I wouldn’t have any standing to do so…

:-)

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[wakeflood]

Hey Job, thanks for doing what you and the other comrades (channelling Rich? LOL :), tried so hard to do. It did and does make a difference. And things would be worse without it.

:-)

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[JoB]

wake..

that thing about kids defying their parents?

too true.

for the most part, they flipped us and our ideas off big time

and devoted every bit of what we taught them to their careers..

like all kids.. they thought we didn’t get it

but..

occupy is largely made up of the first wave of grandchildren

who are flipping off their parents ;->

if you live long enough

you begin to see humor in this…

i don’t know if occupy has learned from us

they certainly have better communication and networking tools than we had

and they are putting them to good use

i have hope

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[JoB]

in a weird sort of way

this clip illustrates how far we have come

Al Sharpton Slaps Revisionists on Mandela. We chose The Wrong Side (VIDEO)

to embrace Mandella is now PC :)

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