It’s not everyday that you can say over the past 14 days the world has utterly changed. But since Thanksgiving, it has.
Washington has begun thawing its decades-long glacially icy relationship with Tehran, coming to terms with Iran over its potential nuclear capabilities with a “mutually defined (uranium) enrichment program,” ending nearly forty years of animosity following the U.S. hostage crisis in 1979.
Pope Francis called global capitalism “tyranny,” exhorting his followers and his church to commit more forcefully for economic justice for the poor, and saying no to the idolatry of money.
And yesterday, the world mourned the passing of Nelson Mandela. Not just a man or a national leader, but a person who was and will be a powerful global symbol of resistance against oppression: the extreme racist system of South African apartheid.
With these three events, we memorialize not only Nelson Mandela, but the world we knew in the late 1970s and 1980s. This era began when President Jimmy Carter left office after serving only one term, having been scorched at the polls for his handling of the economy and the Iran hostage crisis. Ronald Wilson Reagan became president with help from the subversion of an “October Surprise” by Jimmy Carter to free the hostages held in Tehran prior to 1980 presidential election, summarized this way: