De Mortuis Nihil Non Est Nissi Bonum

Over the past weekend, one of the rather depressing things that has come out of the passing of President George H.W. Bush is the nasty tone around his passing - not from his political enemies (which one might expect), but from his theoretical allies.

I have scanned the sites that I usually do and almost overwhelmingly I have found almost nothing but political invective against him.  25 years has done nothing (apparently) to dull the anger and rage of individuals and their opinions.  For every person that wrote sympathy to his family, there seemed to be four times that number that remembered something that they hated.  Those who he was political opposed too overwhelmingly speak of his grace and tact.  Those he was politically aligned with speak of every bad decision he made.

Why does this all matter?

Look from the outside in.  You may be an individual that has no strong political leanings one way or the other.  You read the attacks of a side against someone - now deceased and unable to defend themselves.  How likely are you to become attached to that line of thinking?  Not very - if they savage their dead like that, what do they do to the living?

(It is a point to consider for every line of endeavor, be it political, religious, economics, even back to the land:  if you are only ever arguing against something you will never win.  You have to be for something, to present ideas, if you want to move opinion and people to your way of thinking).

De mortuis nihil non est nissi bonum - Speak nothing but good of dead.  For the ancient Romans, a very practical consideration lest their enraged spirits come back to haunt.  For those of us living now, less likely that we are concerned about vengeful spirits - but the continued carping about deeds long past may make them victim to ghosts of the future from those now living that remember the side that made war on their own dead.