This photo has gone viral. It showed up on my Twitter and Facebook feeds today.
I thought I’d share it here, with a couple of quick comments.
One is that the quote from Donald J. Trump makes no equivocation about how he believes he has been treated. The phrase “No politician in history” excludes no one. It’s the height of hyperbole.
There’s that.
Two, the picture is of the late Nelson Mandela. He is looking out from his prison cell on Robben Island, in South Africa. He was held prisoner there for 27 years before being released in 1990.
His “crime”?Ā Mandela protested his country’s apartheid policies, the law that kept black and whiteĀ people separate and denied black South Africans the basic rights of citizenship. Things like, oh, voting, home ownership, the freedom to speak their minds in public. Small stuff like that.
The government scrapped its apartheid policies shortly after his release from prison and Mandela later would be elected president of South Africa.
This great man was treated far worse and “unfairly” than Donald J. Trump has been treated.
I just had to get that off my chest.