today's history 101 lesson: south africa

As if to elaborate on the pessimism of the previous post, here is an outstanding article a friend recently passed along to me. I would grab a few quotes from it, but the whole thing is that good so you just need to go read it all. Scary stuff, I tell you, and not in the least because some of what the author suspected would happen in the U.S. has already happened since she wrote the piece. Either she's a total quack making a bunch of doomsday predictions and trying to stir up fury, or she's at least partially right on some of that.

I, of course, believe the latter to be the case. The article has tremendous insight and reads like it was written by someone watching a predictable series of events from afar. And as I said, she has already been proven to be a prophet of sorts on many issues. This is very ungood for those who would like to see the States continue to be a beacon of civilization.

I figure it must seem like watching a movie you've seen before--you don't know or remember exactly how every detail will work out until just as it happens, but you know the basic plot line. You are happy to see the characters do things that will work in their favor and wince as they make bad moves, because you know what's coming. Especially important, you know how it ends. Even if some twists catch you by surprise, you know the arc the storyline is on and getting from here to there is only a matter of filling in the intermediate details. I submit that world events parallel history in such fashion more often than we may realize, and that the scenario outlined in the article will eventually be just more supporting evidence.

As I told the guy who sent the link to me, I hope I'm wrong but I suspect it's too late to change the onslaught of stupidity and ignorance that is gaining ground faster than ever in this country. A lot of that has been building for too long and would take at least a generation, likely more, to change. We won't have that kind of time if things continue as they do, and hoping for people to suddenly wake up to what's going on and/or get the courage to stand up and resist it is a sucker bet too.

The topic of South Africa is an interesting one in itself. I don't know much about its recent history, but I remember seeing the headlines and hearing about it constantly back in the day when apartheid was being dismantled and Mandela was getting released from prison and being celebrated as a worldwide hero and all. I always figured things worked out going forward. After all, we just kinda quit hearing anything about it from the "news" peddlers, so it's safe to assume things must have gone okay, right? After all, since when did the news media turn its back on a story wrought with destruction, violence, despair, and all those things that sell so well to the tube-watching public? Oh, right, when events at hand didn't fit their paradigm of how they wish the world to be...gotcha.

I'm suddenly quite curious as to what the real story of South Africa is, as well as that of Mandela, et al. Were things ever really as they were made out to be? What's it really like over there now? Hopefully the article paints a grimmer picture of reality than what it really is, as there are always many sides to the same story, but I wonder how much of what went on and is going on was/is considered "unreportable" by the powers that be and simply not passed along to the masses.

Oh well, in the end it's a good thing to know that God performs miracles and that what we see happening around us is all but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. We may just need one or two or several to get out of the mess we're in. And if we end up on the low road? As they say, God has a habit of refining his church every now and then...