Mourning Controversial Politicians/World Leaders

[Liquid]

With the death of Fidel Castro fresh in the news, this seems like something worthy of its own thread.

Do you mourn the death of any human being, even if you thought they were bad people?
Do you feel sorry for their relatives even though the deceased was a bad person?
Do you try and find whatever positives there may be?
Do you remain neutral and not say anything?
Do you praise people who may have had a few black marks on their record?
Do you unrepentantly slate people you feel deserve it?

Almost all of the 20th century's most infamous leaders died either before I was born or whilst I was too young to know about it. But I have to be honest, there are world leaders out there whose deaths I would not be sorry to hear about; Robert Mugabe being an example.

Evidently, there is a sliding scale of people who are utterly bottom-barrel (Adolf Hitler), stopping at people who are praised/loathed in equal measure (Margaret Thatcher), drifting through people who have black marks on their record but are often lauded (Nelson Mandela, John Paul II) and ending with rare people who are well respected regardless (Charles Stewart Parnell - it's actually hard to think of a recent example).

There is also a bonus category of people who were seemingly well-regarded during their lifetimes but subsequently their reputations changed after their death (Douglas Haig, Winston Churchill) but that does cross over with the "black mark on their record" entry.

Where the intrigue lies and where the argument erupts, is that each of us will consider the same people to be at different ends of the scale.

 

[Carbonox]

I'll strictly reserve empathy to those who fully deserve it. Not many world leaders are on that list.

That is all.

 

[Dotini]

With the death of Fidel Castro fresh in the news, this seems like something worthy of its own thread.

Do you mourn the death of any human being, even if you thought they were bad people?
Do you feel sorry for their relatives even though the deceased was a bad person?
Do you try and find whatever positives there may be?
Do you remain neutral and not say anything?
Do you praise people who may have had a few black marks on their record?
Do you unrepentantly slate people you feel deserve it?

Almost all of the 20th century's most infamous leaders died either before I was born or whilst I was too young to know about it. But I have to be honest, there are world leaders out there whose deaths I would not be sorry to hear about; Robert Mugabe being an example.

Evidently, there is a sliding scale of people who are utterly bottom-barrel (Adolf Hitler), stopping at people who are praised/loathed in equal measure (Margaret Thatcher), drifting through people who have black marks on their record but are often lauded (Nelson Mandela, John Paul II) and ending with rare people who are well respected regardless (Charles Stewart Parnell - it's actually hard to think of a recent example).

There is also a bonus category of people who were seemingly well-regarded during their lifetimes but subsequently their reputations changed after their death (Douglas Haig, Winston Churchill) but that does cross over with the "black mark on their record" entry.

Where the intrigue lies and where the argument erupts, is that each of us will consider the same people to be at different ends of the scale.

If we judge yesterday's - or even today's leaders - by academically or politically correct standards, they all come up shades of gray.

Leaders are typically men of action, alpha males with no shortage of self-confidence, swagger and hubris.

I cried when JFK was gunned down in Dallas. But later I learned he had it coming.

 

[Liquid]

I cried when JFK was gunned down in Dallas.

I'm not sure how old you would have been at the time but may I ask why you cried?

 

[Dennisch]

If you have blood of innocent people on your hands, direct or indirect, no sympathy from me.

 

[Dotini]

I'm not sure how old you would have been at the time but may I ask why you cried?

I would have been about 14, a time of great changes going on in a young man's life. So maybe I would have been emotional. But many people, even adults, had traumatic reactions of shock and loss. The media had portrayed him as a young, handsome war hero now on a mission to save the free world from communism. Being patriotic, we all bought it, hook, line and sinker. It seemed like a great loss for the nation at the time. I'm still puzzled by it.

 

[Exorcet]

I don't tend to say anything regarding the person in question when it comes to forum threads or other public statements. As the person is dead, they don't care about what you have to say. My words also probably won't reach anyone close to that person.

I don't think that it's correct to assume relatives will automatically mourn either, it will depend on the person. You spend a lot of time with family by necessity, but they don't have to be people you're particularly close to or on good terms with.

As for my judgement on people, you can't erase bad deeds. The same goes for good deeds though. It can be hard to condense a person's life into a single rank or statistic, which is where I think part of the problem arises from. If you really want a meaningful evaluation of a person, it probably has to be in depth. We don't really need to find a single label for every person. I think their history suffices and speaks for itself.

 

[Joey D]

I only mourn people I know, that I have a connection to in some way, or that have had some sort of impact on my life. World leaders rarely, if ever, fall into that category.

I think it's fine to celebrate someone's death too if they oppressed you or causes you a great deal of harm, I would imagine it would be almost like some sort of relief knowing that person is no longer capable of doing whatever evil thing they did to make you resent them so much in the first place.

 

[Pupik]

I think there's a big difference between a leader dying while in power, or afterwards. And did it occur in your land, your region, or a neighboring place? I think there's a huge ethnocentric force that prevails, mainly due to custom and superstition, which dictates a lot of your actions...as well as how freely one can publicly express those emotions (or lack thereof) in the first place.

I think there's typically the principle that we institutionally and strongly value human life, even if someone is disliked, hated, reviled, et al; their loss probably brings a varying wave of unease that comes with an unclear view of the future. We're still emotional animals, in ways...it's easy to think that brutality might make things better in the short run rather than the long-term, but we also have behavioral fears that the removal of someone upheld out of our plane of existence might have immediate effects upon ourselves. As an example, I recall my parents telling me that the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald the following day really had them scared than anything else; for a brief moment, it appeared we'd plunged into total chaos.

Sympathetically, when you're distant from that controversial leader or figure, I think there's other reactionary considerations that peel away the false veneers of leadership and vanity; hey, that was somebody's child and could be someone's parent. I guess there can be the social concern that someone might actually be negatively affected by their loss the same way we'd feel about losing a parent or child. Or, whether you have any religious feelings or thoughts on the afterlife (personally, I have none). One thing humans sometimes do is to search oneself for the same faults in those we despise, and work on discarding them when possible, otherwise, we are no better than they were.

I'm not a big celebrator of death...yeah, there's some folks throughout history who probably would have had me dancing in the streets if they'd had an immediate (and not historical) reach, but we're all going to The Void someday as well. After hearing of Castro's death (like other despots), I just shrugged my shoulders, said "it's about time", and immediately moved on to other things without a second thought until now. Without bringing up a political firestorm, I think I thought vaguely the same thing when I'd heard Richard Nixon died, although he hadn't exactly marched thousands to their early deaths.

 

[ryzno]

Do you mourn the death of any human being, even if you thought they were bad people?
Do you feel sorry for their relatives even though the deceased was a bad person?

I'd say these are the main 2 reasons I said RIP. Someone said "just cause they are family doesn't mean that they will be missed." True, but just like his victims, someone, loved him.
That doesn't mean I liked him or approved of him, just cause I said condolences to the family.

I've seen death twice. And I'm not talking about someone peacefully passing away in a hospital either...
That's all I have to say.

 

[Lucas]

Do you mourn the death of any human being, even if you thought they were bad people?

It depends, I suppose, on what kind of "bad" people they were.

Do you feel sorry for their relatives even though the deceased was a bad person?

Yes, definitely, unless they actively encouraged the "badness" of that person.

Do you try and find whatever positives there may be?

Of course. People aren't black and white, and people shouldn't be judged solely on the things they did wrong. Even if it is difficult to find the positives on some people, I try to think of them as human beings that didn't live being "evil", but doing what they thought was right.

Do you remain neutral and not say anything?

I never say anything because more likely than not, I'm not familiar enough with these figures to properly defend my opinion on them.

Do you praise people who may have had a few black marks on their record?

If the positives outweigh the negatives, and asuming the negatives aren't real negatives (say, someone murdered millions of innocent people), then possibly yes.

Do you unrepentantly slate people you feel deserve it?

No. I firmly believe no two persons are equal, no matter how close they are in upbringing, and who knows what kind of people would we be if we had been born and raised in their conditions.