Margaret Thatcher, RIP

     I am not going to nominate Mrs. Thatcher for sainthood.  Sainthood nominations are rather above my pay-grade.

     But I would like to say that at the time of her presence on the world political stage -- roughly the entire decade of the Eighties plus a bit more -- I regarded her as a person who was seriously working for a better world; and still today, given all her real and imagined limitations, I prefer what she did, and attempted to do, above the criticisms of most or all of her detractors.

     We must acknowledge that she rose to prominence in the context of the British Commonwealth, a system of government deeply compromised and corrupted for generations, not only at the Parliamentary-visible-formal level, but even more so at the City-of-London-secretive-actual level.  This is a system so thoroughly drenched in greed and blood, so throughly controlled by the gods Mammon and Molech, for so long, that I can hardly assert to others, or even believe within myself, that she succeeded in getting to her position of Prime Minister with her own hands completely clean, or her own heart pure.

     I could say precisely the same thing about the three other most prominent political persons of her decade, and the systems in which they operated -- Ronald Reagan and Corporate America, John Paul II and the Vatican, and Mikhail Gorbachev and Soviet-style Communism.  And I think I would not be too far from the truth.

     I would agree that their concerted efforts and achievements for a more peaceful and cooperative world were only partial, and I would acknowledge that they are not above serious criticism.

     But when I compare them with their acolytes, critics, and detractors, I marvel that they were able to do as much as they did, as well as they did.

     When I consider the digressions and transgressions of their confederates and the regressions of their successors, I grieve at how much that they accomplished was misunderstood, disregarded, and frittered away by brute venality and militant ignorance.  Or should I have said, ignorant militance and venal brutality.

     I don't much care about the big funeral they are planning for the "Iron Lady."  It makes me think of the Reagan funeral, where many folks, among the small and the great, imagined they were respecting and admiring an individual (or a movement of individuals), when in the reality of their own hearts they were committed to undoing what the dearly departed had done or tried to do.

     Rest in peace, Mrs. Thatcher.  You did what you could.