The Human Factor

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
–William Ernest Henley

Whoever turned up the dial on time did a fine job, didn’t they? The last days of 2013 are racing by, leaving only the tiniest trace of themselves behind. This was a week when household emergencies and the inevitable advance of the holidays took supremacy over politics for me, but the news of the day didn’t grab headlines until Nelson Mandela made his final transition, long expected and, given his physical condition, a mercy. He leaves behind a nation better for his coming and sadder for his loss.

American politicians are being customarily obtuse in dealing with South Africa’s former president. Rick Santorum proclaimed that while “what Mandela was advocating for was not necessarily the right answer,” he was a man who battled ‘great injustice,’ similar — sez he — to the Pubs fighting against the tyranny of Obamacare. Dick Cheney affirmed that from his perspective, once a terrorist, always a terrorist but that Mandela had “mellowed” once he came to power. And not to be left out, Bill O’Reilly joined these two in faint praise, saying Mandela was “a great man but he was a Communist.” Well. Alrighty then.

O’Reilly and Santorum ALMOST rival Limbaugh in the contest for Dunce of the Week, after Rush’s rant  — echoed by enough in the conservative camp to garner Jon Stewart’s attention — about the new and suspect “Marxist” Pope who is “ripping America” by going after unfettered capitalism, hence The American Way. Such an attack, said Rush, is “the pope ripping Ronaldus Magnus, the pope ripping trickle-down economics.” And all of that, said the Haterater, unable to restrain himself from being even more disrespectful, is giving “Obama an orgasm.”

One has no need to wonder what this latest brand of radical-conservative thinks of Gandhi or even — gasp — the Nazarene as non-violent peace advocates: sappy, misguided nanny-state hippies acting against the natural order (of unstated but understood elitism and white supremacy). Mandela’s passing has brought us another of those opportunities to see ourselves in the harsh mirror of history. A study of suddenly post-apartheid South Africa had the same energy signature as what we’re seeing around us today, well worth consideration as we speculate on the nonsense of having reached a post-racial society.

Isn’t it interesting that those who seem destined to think outside the box — who stand firm in the face of powerful disapproval, who prod us to question ourselves and our truth, who bring the best of our consciousness and our highest aspirations to the forefront — are seldom appreciated as the game changers they are until after they have passed out of sight?

The man affectionately known by his clan name, Madiba, spent much of his life in prison — learning to read Afrikaans, practicing his ability to organize and inspire those around him, refining his transformation of anger into forgiveness — to emerge 27 years later a man tried, tested and found worthy of greatness.

Not that Mandela was saintly, of course. Revisionists — those who hated him for his toughness or ignored him for his idealism — were warned this week by a commentator named Ogwanda, as reported by ThinkProgress:

Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.”

Yes, perhaps. And yet it is not his anger I remember. When I heard that Mandela had passed, I immediately thought of “Invictus,” the 2009 movie about the 1995 South African Rugby World Cup. The film was adapted from John Carlin’s book, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation. I’m not big on sports, but I was drawn to this true story by its stars, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, acting under the direction of Clint Eastwood. With a lineup like that, what could go wrong, I reasoned, as I added it to my Netflix cue. Turns out, nothing.

I watched “Invictus” three tearful times, marveling at that indefinable something that sparks inspiration and humanitarianism within the human breast. It’s that very quality, spurring our intellect and opening our hearts, that can sometimes be called forth but seldom be sustained. Even Mandela had his challenges getting everyone on the same page, which is what this film is about, perhaps what our entire process here on planet Terra is all about. It is that very human factor that closes the gaps between us, that speaks to us of our commonality and communion. It’s that elusive human factor that makes all the difference, is it not?

The hopey-changey guy in the White House was able to spark that rare energy, once-upon-a-time. He seems to be itching to get that mojo back, if you read between the lines of his recent speeches. Calling inequality and lack of upward mobility the defining challenge of our time, Obama has thrown his weight behind support for a living wage this week. He has repeatedly suggested that he has no more elections to win, so he can focus on what’s important.

Cynics call that a ploy to change the topic from the ACA dilemma, but if you follow the speech he gave last Tuesday you will note that he has all the right information to plead the progressive case. He’s selling his position as a populist issue, making plain that economic inequality is not a “minority issue” as often asserted by the right-leaners. According to the prez, “The opportunity gap in American now is as much about class as it is about race, and that gap is growing,” pointing to the gap in test scores between rich and poor children as “nearly twice” that between black and white students.

Perhaps those who are disappointed in Obama’s performance will be happy to move on to less centrist possibilities when the time comes (which — segue — doesn’t sound much like Hillary, does it?), but at minimum, we should acknowledge that this man has also been very aware of the human factor during his time in office. That speech he just made, that criticism we just heard, was directed at plutocracy and the corporatocracy that enables it.

While so many are disillusioned in the first half of his presidency, I’m still impressed by all he HAS done despite the Republican determination to stop him. And yes, we’re talking about success on a mundane political level, of course. The day we see a United States president step up to the plate to bash American hegemony or establishment politics, I’LL have an orgasm, sans commentary from Rush. Still, there is a very human factor at work here, one that we can hear in Obama’s tone of regret as he spoke to Chris Matthews this week, reflecting on his time in office and the passing of Mandela, whom he credits — as have so many others — for politicizing his early years. (To this day, I won’t buy gasoline from Shell Oil.)

“The interesting thing about having been president now for five years,” he told Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” “is that it makes you humbler — as opposed to cockier — about what an individual can do. […] You recognize that you are just part of the sweep of history. And your job is really to push the boulder up the hill a little bit before someone else pushes it up a little further. The task never stops of perfecting our union.”

To continue that warning of Okwonga should we try to recreate Mandela in our own image:

Well, try hard as you like, and you’ll fail. Because Mandela was about politics and he was about race and he was about freedom and he was even about force, and he did what he felt he had to do and given the current economic inequality in South Africa he might even have died thinking he didn’t do nearly enough of it. And perhaps the greatest tragedy of Mandela’s life isn’t that he spent almost thirty years jailed by well-heeled racists who tried to shatter millions of spirits through breaking his soul, but that there weren’t or aren’t nearly enough people like him.

And while that’s true, by the time Madiba had polished all his emotions, transformed all his passions and come to a point of grace, he became a person aware that the human factor was what was most critical in bringing people together, in creating a social platform for all colors and creeds. He never gave out, he never gave in — but he also walked a careful line between activism and compromise. He didn’t arrive at the South African presidency with closed fists, but rather with open hands and heart, and a clear picture of the concerns that had shaped his evolution.

If there aren’t enough like him, that’s our fault. If there aren’t enough people out there who understand that they are their brother’s keeper, then they must hear the stories we can tell them, as we listen to those echoes around us reminding us that we are equal citizens in the vast human family. Those of us who are aware have a responsibility to keep that message alive. The unconquerable soul of Nelson Mandela has moved on and his voice has been silenced, but his legacy to move us to follow our better angels is as potent now as it was twenty years ago.

Certainly racism and inequality still await us in this critical battle for the soul of humanity, the well-being of the collective, but the voices that came before, those that came after and the voices that will surely follow are not silenced. That is the business of enlightenment, deep in the heart of humankind. And that is surely the work that we came for.