A friend recently made me aware of a story with perfectly sums up the attitude of Defenders of the Myth:
The donkey told the tiger: “The grass is blue”.
The tiger replied: “No, the grass is green”.
The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, and to do so they approached the lion.
Before reaching the clearing in the forest where the lion was sitting on his throne, the donkey started screaming: “Your Highness, isn’t it true that the grass is blue?”
The lion replied: “True, the grass is blue”.
The donkey rushed forward and continued: “The tiger disagrees with me and contradicts me and annoys me. Please punish him”.
The king then declared: “The tiger will be punished with 5 years of silence”.
The donkey jumped with joy and went on his way, content and repeating: “The grass is blue”..
The tiger accepted his punishment, but he asked the lion: “Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after all, the grass is green?”
The lion replied: “Of course the grass is green”.
The tiger asked: “So why do you punish me?”
The lion replied:
“That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is not possible for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with a donkey, and on top of that to come and bother me with that question.
The worst waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic who doesn’t care about truth or reality, but only the victory of his beliefs and illusions. Never waste time on discussions that make no sense… There are people who for all the evidence presented to them, do not have the ability to understand, and others who are blinded by ego, hatred and resentment, and the only thing that they want is to be right even if they aren’t.
When ignorance screams, intelligence shuts up. Your peace and tranquility are worth more”.
All that being said, and as much as I am sure the likes of Prof Pretorius must indeed wish I would keep quiet for the next five years, and stop shattering their much-cherished self-serving tales of victimhood, I have no intention of following the Lion’s sage advice.
I shall instead keep challenging the increasingly deranged and fanatical Defenders of the Myth, True Believers, and other assorted donkeys, as they frantically flail and flap to keep their National Party fairy tales alive a little longer.
10 Comments
Interesting parable. Funnily enough I read the same thing on FB just a few days ago and meant to take a note of it.
And the sad part is that the biggest bloody donkey of them all is a History Professor!
I was about to take a swing at one such Boer War armchair specialist who said of the Jameson Raid that Kruger “did not try make political capital from the Raid” – then I read this and figured I’m just going to reply “the grass is blue”.
Not that your blinkered interlocutor will be interested, but – in reality, rather than as documented in the NP approved textbooks he prefers – Kruger made enormous political capital from the Raid.
The prize-winning French economist, M. Yves Guyot, who wrote extensively on the subject of the Transvaal, wryly noted at the time, the consequences of the Raid, at least as seen by Kruger’s government, were as follows:
1. The Jameson Raid of 29 December 1895 gives the South African Republic the right in perpetuity to regard the Convention of 1884 as null and void.
2. The Jameson Raid gives the government of the South African Republic the right to treat all uitlanders, especially the British, as Boers treat K****rs.
3. The Jameson Raid gives the government of the South African Republic an undefined and perpetual right to plunder the uitlanders.
It was also seized upon as an excuse to further increase Kruger’s military capability. Of course, the inconvenient truth for today’s True Believers is that Kruger’s massive war machine building programme antedated Jameson’s folly — in fact, Kruger’s expenditure on military hardware was one of the many factors that prompted the Raid:
‘A policy of force is openly declared against us; £250,000 has been expended on the construction of forts; upon one alone, designed to terrorize the inhabitants of Johannesburg, £100,000 has been spent. Large orders have been given to Krupp for big guns and Maxims; and it is said that German officers are coming to drill the burghers.’
The moral high ground afforded Oom Paul by Jameson’s faux pas was used to justify his ever-increasing spend on weaponry and espionage. With the shame of the Raid still raw, the British had little choice but to turn a blind eye. Kruger (just like the True Believers today) was happiest playing the victim and the botched Raid was a heaven-sent opportunity for him to do just that.
But yeah… you might be better off just telling this moron that the grass is blue.
The underpinning Suzerainty of the Pretoria Convention of 1881, and as pointed out by M. Yves Guyot, the London Convention of 1884, is the source of just about all the conflict, as Kruger wants ‘full’ sovereignty and independence for the ZAR and he does not have it no matter how much he closers his eyes and wishes he did.
Kruger is unable to get full sovereignty for the ZAR after the Jameson Raid, but uses the raid to ignore his state’s ‘client state’ restrictions running up a drift crises, a railroad crisis, state monopolies, land claims, arms buying/mission creep, native conflicts, foreign envoys and franchise issues on the reef so as to affect foreign policy and all of these actions break with the 1884 Convention and its underpinning Suzerainty stipulations.
The issue comes to a head when Milner meets Kruger on the 31st May 1899 to affect a 5 year Uitlander franchise consistent with the the spirit of the Pretoria and London conventions only to be met with a barrage of Suzerainty issues which Kruger wants resolved first, before he would consider a 5 year Franchise.
Milner tells Kruger to hop it and what follows is a four month long cat and mouse game with the Franchise period gradually dropping to 7 years with “conditions”‘ attached – the final offer on 19th August is a 5 year franchise, on the proviso that Britain drops her Suzerainty claim to the ZAR (i.e. tear up the 1884 London convention). So, it went full circle and Kruger at no point budges from his original position – and neither do the British for that matter.
The net result of the resultant impasse and realisation that Kruger does not ever intend to concede power is a declaration of war by the Boers against the British by the 11th October 1899
As historians go, both Leopold Amery (then) and Bill Nasson (now) claim the Suzerainty (not gold and diamonds or ‘Cape to Cairo’ British Imperialism) is the Casus Belli of the Boer War.
I’m going to write a future blog on this for The Observation Post called “Oh for Suzerainty sakes!” – look out for it, as I’m pretty sure many of these armchair Boer War ‘specialists’ even know what a Suzerainty is – as they still believe the ZAR was a sovereign country … the grass is blue!
Looking forward to the article – it’ll have the True Believers (and the poor old Prof) choking on their Klippies and cola.
My latest article will have the Prof choking on his Klippies and Coke -https://samilhistory.com/2023/07/09/oom-kruger-the-man-the-movie-the-myth/
I am afraid there is a lot more to the Jameson Raid
Which would include an investigation of the role of the – Reform Committee as well as the role of the “Rand-lords”
One needs to ask WHY Jameson continued when apparently Rhodes advised him to abandon the raid ?
It wrecked Rhodes future plans , his relationship with the Afrikaner Bond , and cost him the premiership of the Cape
Induced the Kaiser to send a telegram of congratulations to Kruger which pleased Kruger no end.
Jameson obviously did something right as he ended up replacing Rhodes as premier of the Cape – and reaching rapprochement with Louis Botha which extended to teaching him how to play bridge !
Instead of pondering “suzerainty” – a vague concept , why not try and ascertain why Jameson continued with his ill-fated “raid” ?
[AND] cut the wrong telegraph line ….
A “faux-pas” indeed
Need to get my hands on your book the IF man.
One finds them everywhere
Some “Intelligence” ?
Page 51Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies Summer-Fall 2021
When Intelligence Made a Difference
— 1 9 t h C e n t u r y —
Doctor Jameson’s Raid
by Alex Vermeulen
Alex Vermeulen is a senior at New York University
majoring in Latin and Greek with a minor in German.
He also studies Afrikaans
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