Me and Thaddeus Stevens

This weekend, I watched Lincoln, I've been meaning to for ages. SPOILER ALERT! Tommy Lee Jones plays a politician called Thaddeus Jones and without giving too much of the film away (lets face it we all know, they squeeze the 13th ammendment through and Lincoln gets shot), Thaddeeus Stevens is an old ugly man, very grumpy and known for insulting people. His passion for equality surpassed his interest in the individuals around him in politics. There are quotes like:

Abraham Lincoln: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they're ready to...
Thaddeus Stevens: Shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for. I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the *good* of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And now I look a lot worse without my wig.

and:

Thaddeus Stevens: Slave is the only insult to the natural law, you fatuous nincompoop.

At the end of the film, finally when the 13th amendment had scraped through by a majority of two, Stevens takes the actual amendment paper, folds it in half and says to the clerk, I'll have it back to you in the morning, with one fold added, or words to that effect. He goes home, his coloured housekeeper opens the door, takes his coat, then you realise there's more to this, they converse as friends and equals, then you realise she took his coat as a wife would, they get into bed next to each other and she reads the 13th amendment to her husband. They had achieved a massive result - the end of slavery and the end to owning another human being.

Steven's passion for freedom and his disdain and indifference for people who couldn't see it, struck a chord with me. Emotionally, he had a wife, who happened to be of colour, but otherwise no difference, he was 100 years before his time. He was criticised and hated for his rudeness, rudeness to people who would have the woman he loved shackled and put to work.

He has to change his pitch in the run up to the vote for the 13th amendment from freedom for all people regardless of colour, to freedom in the eyes of the law (which in effect meant they would free the slaves but so long as the law didn't afford blacks the vote, all the other politicians could vote for the end of slavery without worrying about real emancipation).

He saw the point of amending the truth of his intentions and beliefs to get the amendment through. He had to.

Thaddeus Stevens: How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio, proof that some men ARE inferior, endowed by their maker with dim wits impermeable to reason with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot blood! You are more reptile than man, Mr. Pendleton, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you! Yet even YOU, Pendleton, who should have been gibbetted for treason long before today, even worthless, unworthy you deserve to be treated equally before the law! And so again, I say that I do not hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law!

Getting the vote for her, both as a black person and as a woman would take much much longer.

I shout at councillors and I don't care for idiots who endanger my kids on the roads in their stinking cars. I find it very hard to tone it down at times!

Emotionally, My kids are like his wife and as they grow up I am sick to my stomach by how kids are confined to houses and cars. There are no kids playing on the streets any more. The 70+ year olds round here may have walked or cycled 5 or 10 miles to school, now kids aren't allowed to walk 200 yards.

I know that ending slavery and cyclist's rights might not be in the same league, but lives are at stake, on many many levels anyone reading this will know very well.

Cars can be very useful but why did it have to come to a point where it's the only acceptable form of transportation. A sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I get backs up in in Ely asking for 20mph, complaining that my kids have no safe route to school and that there's no future proofing happening - 3000 new homes, not enough roads and not enough alternatives to driving on offer?

This is urgent, do we have to wait like Thaddeus had to to get his wife the vote? Or should we be nice to self serving local councillors who won't get on the wrong side of anyone, have no interest in improving matters and certainly don't prioritise the next generation.

What are our priorities? the car or the child?