Nelson Mandela has died.

[blackcoffee]

http://america.aljazeera.com/



Much love and respect for this man. He's up there with Gandhi and the Dali Lama in terms of his spirit surpassing that of mortal humans.

[Pandemonium]

It's clearly no surprise considering his age and health issues, but he led a long, storied life and history will undoubtedly regard him as one of the great leaders of the 20th century. Not just South Africa, but he world is poorer for his passing.

[Jasper]

South Africa is a disaster. I keep hoping my friends there will leave, but they're not very realistic types, to put it mildly.

I actually saw Nelson Mandela speak in Boston way back when he was released from prison. It was a gigantic event.

[kv]

i was thinking about mandela today...ya know the gandhi, mother theresa, mlk and now mandela...they are all gone...where are the new modern day saints? seriously name one?

[Larry B.]

Mother Teresa was a cunt, actually. There's no such thing as saints, there's always two sides of a coin. Gandhi was a twat too.

[kv]

point missed

[Larry B.]

Well, Bill Gates is trying to eradicate malaria.

Snowden is trying to make the world realize how fucked up their leaders are and how oppressed/controlled they really are, or how much of a joke democracy is, or how little power people really have.

I've set up a Secret Santa two years in a row and I feed stray dogs.

Fidel Castro has fought against everything and everyone to stop Cuba from becoming (once again) the backyard of debauchery of the US and/or the Western world.

It'll always depend on your lens

[Bandit72]

Mother Teresa was a cunt, actually. There's no such thing as saints, there's always two sides of a coin. Gandhi was a twat too.

And some class Mandela as a terrorist. Which I suppose he was, but for the right reasons I guess.

[Bandit72]

Snowden is trying to make the world realize how fucked up their leaders are and how oppressed/controlled they really are, or how much of a joke democracy is, or how little power people really have.

Churchill thought democracy was a joke too.

[Jasper]

Larry does have a point, and I'd add that in this day and age, with such increased flow of information, it may be far more difficult for an individual to be mythologized as some epic pillar of good or evil.

You could paint Mandela in a pretty bad light, and you could do something similar for all of the other "saints" mentioned.

There are plenty of people doing big things that a lot of people would consider good, but it's unlikely that they'll be made into the same sorts of epic beyond-human monoliths as we've seen in the past. This isn't to say that they can't be icons or big stars, but the human dimension (good, bad, and ugly) is more exposed than ever.

[Larry B.]

Exactly.

[krakle]

Snowden is trying to make the world realize how fucked up their leaders are and how oppressed/controlled they really are, or how much of a joke democracy is, or how little power people really have.

No joke

[Matz]

i was thinking about mandela today...ya know the gandhi, mother theresa, mlk and now mandela...they are all gone...where are the new modern day saints? seriously name one?

pretty sure Bono sees himself as one