Opus 2026-153: Headlines: Farewell to Jesse

I did not pay any attention to the funeral for Jesse Jackson.  From what click bait I could see it turned into the circus I would have expected.  Funerals are usually times of sugar coating and hyperbole anyway and when you have a poster child for the left it could only be worse.

I would like to point out the similarities that Jackson had with another historic figure, Benedict Arnold.  What they had in common was that early in their careers they started off very well.  Arnold was the key figure in the Battle of Saratoga which kept the American army alive early in the Revolution.  A political general stole all the credit and it started Arnold down the road to becoming a figure equal to Judas.  

Jackson, in a similar way, started out as a noble figure.  He was on the road to becoming a key to freeing American blacks from the plantation.  He had a lot of good ideas and was implementing them.  In one book I am reading, written about that time, Jackson was lumped with dynamic thinkers like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.  At the time it was deserved.  People forget that part of his life because he went so far south later.  I don’t know where he went wrong but I think he got a taste of power and money which had him make a deal with the devil.

I understand that there is a statute to Benedict Arnold but it only has a leg.  That is because he was shot in the leg at the Battle of Saratoga and Americans want to remember that part of his life.  I am not sure what kind of legacy we could post for Jackson.  I would suggest a rainbow because that was in the name of his early organization but the rainbow has been hijacked by other groups since.

I salute him for his early contributions and hold him up as an object lesson for corruption in his later life.  Let him be a warning.

homo unius libri