{"id":4305,"date":"2013-04-23T10:40:38","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T10:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4305"},"modified":"2013-04-23T10:47:09","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T10:47:09","slug":"mandela-obama-and-the-end-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4305","title":{"rendered":"Mandela, Obama and the end of democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><strong style=\"mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;\"><\/strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/mandelobama.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4306\" title=\"mandelobama\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/mandelobama-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/mandelobama-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/mandelobama.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 85vw, 240px\" \/><\/a>One of the best means of enslaving an entire people is to weave them an illusion that they are free. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Significant\u00a0cornerstones in achieving this grand illusion have already been set in the West, and regardless whether one believes in conspiracy theory or no, the outcome is undeniable. The only true difference is that under the incumbent US president Obama, the drive towards the extinction of the Free West has accelerated. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Even though this process has been in the making for many decades,\u00a0South Africa&#8217;s fictional portrayal\u00a0to the rest of the world has played a formidable part in all this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">The world was filled with a peculiar kind of absolution when Nelson Mandela was released from prison back in 1990, and even though he has continually threatened with violent sedition, he is hailed as one of the world&#8217;s most renowned peace makers.\u00a0His &#8220;peaceful&#8221; motives were further cast in stone when\u00a0he pocketed\u00a0The Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1993 alongside the last white president of South Africa FW de Klerk. We are now being misled that South Africa is a nation at peace, occasionally disturbed by some bigoted Boers. At least, this is the cover story we are supposed to believe. Yet almost everybody who experienced South Africa\u00a0intimately knows that an\u00a0overwhelming part of this fabrication is just that &#8211; a fabrication. The divide between rich and\u00a0poor\u00a0has widened, infrastructure is failing, taxes\u00a0have increased rapidly and millions of\u00a0people are forced to accept\u00a0a life of humiliating subsistence. Not to mention the daily dose of extreme violence, rape and murder. Any desperate questions toward government regarding the rising tide of squalor is answered with the insincere negation\u00a0that &#8220;the consequences of apartheid&#8221; are to blame, revealing in fact that the ANC is incapable of governing &#8211; all under the aegis of their British\u00a0puppet masters\u00a0of course, who are still\u00a0secretly longing\u00a0for those days when the Union Jack was hoisted over Pretoria\u00a0in 1877. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Important public figures such as Oprah Winfrey however, has swallowed the South African myth hook, line and sinker. In a misplaced show of\u00a0philanthropy\u00a0she had a smiley-face gulag (aka Leadership Academy) built for\u00a0young black\u00a0schoolgirls in the southern outskirts of\u00a0Johannesburg, where the\u00a0Frankensteinian pageant of multiculturalism is being\u00a0indoctrinated with relish. While originally\u00a0claiming that\u00a0the blacks-only school was because\u00a0she didn&#8217;t think the &#8220;whites needed appeasement&#8221;, Winfrey has in the meantime\u00a0appointed a white Afrikaner woman as\u00a0principal after a few scandals drove her to tears under the erstwhile black headmistress. Once again an Afrikaner is called to the rescue by none other than Ms. Aparthate herself. I don&#8217;t expect to see Kierkegaard&#8217;s\u00a0The Concept of Irony in her Book Club\u00a0very soon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Regardless of all these histrionic attempts at &#8220;healing South Africa&#8217;s wounds&#8221; extreme savagery still prevails and\u00a0appears to be on the rise. The Afrikaners have been reduced to personae non gratae in\u00a0the country that they had founded, with an estimate of 80 thousand of their kinsmen brutally murdered since their political demise. Many Afrikaners\u00a0are in a state of\u00a0abject poverty and are hurling insults at FW de Klerk for their fate, branding him the worst traitor their nation has ever had. The fact that De Klerk has\u00a0thus far had ample time and opportunity to voice his concern\u00a0for the state\u00a0his people are in &#8211; as one would expect from a (former) statesman &#8211; he has chosen to turn a blind eye, once more reinforcing the notion that he has truly\u00a0abandoned his people. Silence\u00a0after all is consent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">The muffled voices of desperate Afrikaners\u00a0seems to be a welcome gesture to political opportunists elsewhere, though. Was it not the knock-on effect of the feigned &#8220;South African miracle&#8221; that helped put Obama in the White House? A kind of yearning for a &#8220;Mandela Miracle&#8221; once again? On a similar note the\u00a0coveted Nordic\u00a0peace prize was awarded to America&#8217;s first non-white leader, but under his watch Guantanamo Bay is today markedly worse than ever under Bush. The overwhelming majority of inmates are held without any formal charge and the UN considers many practices to be legally defined as torture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Elsewhere, laws awarding citizens legal counsel have been\u00a0watered down\u00a0by presidential decree, and this disbarred lawyer-turned president now holds the right to arrest anybody anywhere he sees fit. Citizens\u00a0are nowadays under scrutiny by drones in their own country and the legal protection\u00a0of genetically modified food has been approved by Congress, regardless of potential health\u00a0hazards that this food source could cause. By further exploiting heinous crimes such as shooting incidents at schools, the Administration is slowly denying citizens the right to own weapons and ipso facto grants freer licence to law enforcement officials to operate without warrant. The Second Amendment was after all instated solely for the\u00a0purpose\u00a0of preventing an elitist authority from reducing citizens to subjects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Yet all the while, similarly to the Mandela Miracle, the traditional founders of\u00a0Puritan America are awfully quiet about these developments. Perhaps out of fear of being slandered as racists, they choose not to be too vocal. Not only was Mandela&#8217;s glory exported to America, but also the apathy of the conservative whites, who seem to be complacent with being airbrushed out of their own country.\u00a0Both in South Africa and the US, the rant of Nikita Khrushchev that &#8220;We will bury you!&#8221; is starting to come about. Mandela, who took to the communists for support during his ordeal has indeed founded a younger incarnation in Obama &#8211; the latter who considered it prudent to adorn the White House Christmas tree with ornaments of Mao Zedong, the greatest mass murderer the world has ever known.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">Just as philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler had predicted, the once powerful West is on the decline. Similar to many great civilizations throughout history, the social fabric was torn apart by sectarianism and internal strife following mass emigration. Demographic shifts, the excessive demand for energy to sustain population growth and a\u00a0disappearance of well internalized moral bearings had all assisted the collapse of once great civilizations. Democracy then becomes unworkable and a demand for a strong leader to help create order in the chaos becomes the new norm. In fact people will welcome the demise of democracy when the time is due.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">It appears as if the rise of the West has deliberately been sabotaged. Whereas Europe represents the older Western civilization, the Western emigration states such as the US, Canada, the former South Africa and Australasia formed its younger offspring. Being more flexible, energetic and imbued with youthful vigour, the emigration states have kept the spirit of the West alive while Europe was slowly starting to stiffen with age. Mass emigration of non-Western people to\u00a0these younger lands has caused them to age faster and to prematurely nip their growth in the bud, sowing confusion, dissent and disillusionment in the once hailed\u00a0ideal of liberal democracy. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">It is an open question how long these nations could sustain themselves amidst growing dissent. The Marxist ideal of the universal human was after all no more a thought experiment than Rousseau&#8217;s Noble Savage; ostensibly universal but in\u00a0reality\u00a0just\u00a0an artefact of the\u00a0occidental soul.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">After a while, these nations are going to be driven back to their own traditional core values and beliefs, disillusioned with this unworkable quagmire they find themselves in. Under the candy-coated guise of freedom, emancipation and equality a grim hedonism is going to fill the void where a firm basis of traditional values ought to be. By robbing people of their higher freedoms and focusing attention on immediate gratification, people will be reduced to confused child-like states,\u00a0justifying authoritarianism even further.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">It would be wise if people of all backgrounds\u00a0keep an eye on their traditional belief systems, for only in settings peculiar to their own could a\u00a0nation grow towards democratic and mature systems while keeping demoralisation at a minimum.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">And this new struggle has already begun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;\">Joseph Secreve<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"background: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;\" lang=\"EN-US\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; One of the best means of enslaving an entire people is to weave them an illusion that they are free. Significant\u00a0cornerstones in achieving this grand illusion have already been set in the West, and regardless whether one believes in conspiracy theory or no, the outcome is undeniable. The only true difference is that under &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4305\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mandela, Obama and the end of democracy&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,980],"tags":[2696,560,90],"class_list":["post-4305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-joseph-secreve","tag-illusion-of-freedom","tag-nelson-mandela","tag-obama"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/mandelobama.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4305"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4308,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305\/revisions\/4308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}