Mistaking a Six For a Nine

It happens infrequently, but it happens.    It happens when one doesn’t really investigate but slaps a label on another and deals with the label.

There are people who are taken for heroes, who simply were there and did nothing.   There are people who act for one reason but are lauded for another.

In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected President all those who sat in Congress from the States which would secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America, prompting the Civil War, left. Except, Andrew Johnson.

When Lincoln ran for his second term in 1864, the man who had been his Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, was dropped, and Johnson was put on the ticket. When Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became President.

Andrew Johnson did not hold the views attributed to him.

He hadn’t left with the other Southerners because he hated the Plantocrasy.    He hated the rich white men who owned plantations because he been born poor.    Being a poor white man in the South he had no future.  There were no jobs, there was no education.   He was PWT; poor white trash.   His mother sold him to a tailor as an apprentice.    An apprentice was a slave.    He ran away and somehow was lucky.   He learned to read and write when he was sixteen, and proceeded into success and politics.

Johnson believed in slavery.

No one asked him why he didn’t join the other southerners who left the Congress, they assumed he was anti-slavery.

During the period 1865 to 1868 he was such a bad President impeachment was attempted twice.  He has often be ranked as the worst President or fell in the top five.

Aung San Suu Kyi is another such mistake.

She rose to prominence due to her father, who was a hero.   She was under house arrest for many years.  She became an icon, and many high ideals were attributed to her.

Once freed from house arrest, able to take a place in government, she has proven to be as interested in the fate of the Rohingya people as the military which is practicing ethnic cleansing.   She is no hero, no human rights advocate.  She wanted power and she got power.

Like Johnson, she is no champion of human rights, she is a champion of her own power.   Her house arrest was misunderstood and she became a martyr to human rights, when she couldn’t care less about the rights of others.

Since her release and assumption of power, many are shocked at her silence concerning the Rohingya people who are Muslim.

Aung San Suu Kyi actually said; (after receiving the Nobel peace prize)  that  she did not know if the Rohinga were Burmese citizens.

Later, in another inteview, despite being prompted.  she did not condemn violence against the Rohingya.   Recently, she has denied that they are subject to ethnic cleansing,  dishonestly claiming that the ‘unrest’ was on ‘both sides’.

Like Andrew Johnson, Aung San Suu Kyi was misread.