Wednesday, December 7, 2016 – Connect the Dots
Time Magazine voted President-Elect Donald Trump as Person of the year for 2016. Before Trump supporters began to celebrate, Hillary Clinton would have been the Person of the Year had she been elected. The Time Person of the Year is not always an honor. The person selected is a change agent. It is a pictorial statement of opinions voted upon by the magazine editors with an end result of picturing individual(s), groups and even things which signal potential and highly significant changes in the world. The resulting changes more often than not led to an increase in social, political, economic, religious issues and pressures and whether we liked it or not – the world changed.
For example, let us look at some previous Time Persons of the Year. Adolph Hitler was featured in 1938. The following year Joseph Stalin was on the cover. In fact Stalin was featured twice – once again in 1942. In 1957 Nikita Khrushchev was featured after he banged his shoe on the podium at The United Nations while screaming “We will bury you!” Remember in elementary school we all had to learn to spell Khrushchev before we practiced crawling under our desks and put our hands over our heads in the event of nuclear war? And in 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was on the cover. We all had to learn to spell that name too. Heck we had to learn to spell “ayatollah.”
I won in 1966 sort of – The “person” of the year was The Inheritor representing a generation of American men and women aged 25 and under – soon to be labeled Baby Boomers.
In 1974 King Faisal King of Saudi Arabia, was acknowledged in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973–1974, caused by Saudi Arabia withdrawing its oil from world markets in protest at Western support for Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Let’s recall those sweet memories of waiting in the gas lines at 6:00 AM in your designated day.
Then Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, graced the magazine cover in 2001. However, most think it should have been Osama bin Laden. Had it not been for him, Giuliani would not have made as much history.
In 2003 Time selected The American Soldier – Representing U.S. forces around the world, especially in the Iraq War (2003–2011).
The Protesters were featured in 2011. This cover represented many global protest movements — for example, the Arab Spring, the Indignants Movement, the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party movement — as well as protests in Chile, Greece, India and Russia among others.
The Tea Party movement? How interesting is that? This is part of the group today who called protestors against their candidate, ideas, ideals and the election outcome -“crybabies, entitled, whiney hinnies; millenniums, dead beats, non-voters, off springs of terrible parents” etc. Hmm.
Oh well – “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose“– “the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808 -1890) French author and journalist known for his bitter wit.)
Connect the dots however you want. We are living history.
The Butterfly – the symbol of transition. Photo by me.
Here's What I'm Thinking 