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.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus by English poet William Ernest Henley published in 1875.
I watched Clint Eastwood's Invictus last night. I must recommend that you all see it.
The movie concerns itself with Nelson Mandela after his election as President and his attempts to use the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a vehicle to bring his people, black and white, together as a united nation.
Watching this movie, I could not help but see the parallels between President Mandela and President Obama. Both made history by breaking their nation's respective racial barriers and both had to be president of all of their respective nation's people, even the ones that loathed and would do them harm.
If you think that our culture wars are irreconcilable, it would be hard to comprehend post-Apartheid South Africa.
But at the same time, the South Africa of 1995 is not so far removed from the United States of 2009.
Is there much of a difference between an angry white Afrikaner who thinks that his country has "gone to the dogs" and a Tea-bagger screaming at town halls?
We see the President walk the fine line between delivering on the the hopes and dreams of his supporters without alienated his detractors, an almost no-win situation.
Still, Mandela struggled hard in his presidency, after spending 27 years as a political prisoner of the apartheid regime to earn such victories. In an early scene set the morning after Mandela is inaugurated, an Afrikaner newspaper's headline sharply asks if he's qualified to run the country, while a white, English-speaking TV talking head speaks of Mandela's task to "balance black aspirations with white fears."
It's eerie that 15 years later those very same issues are continually raised on our own shores by pundits, prominent members of the opposition party, and some of the public in Barack Obama's fledgling presidency.
http://www.thegrio.com/...