In LOVE with Humanity

Shortly thereafter, two anxious onlookers came out and pulled the Tank Man to safety,
and the waters of anonymity closed around him once more – but not before his lasting legacy
of courage had been ingrained into the hearts and minds of everyone who had witnessed his
bravery, as well as everyone who has witnessed it since.
―The meaning of his moment was instantly decipherable in any tongue, to any age.
Even the billions who cannot read and those who have never heard of Mao Zedong could
follow what the ‗Tank Man‘ did. A small, unexceptional figure in slacks and white shirt,
carrying what looks to be his shopping, posts himself before an approaching tank, with a
line of 17 more tanks behind it. The tank swerves right; he, to block it, moves left. The tank
swerves left; he moves right. Then this anonymous man clambers up onto the vehicle of war
and says something to its driver, something which comes down to us as: ‗Why are you here?
My city is in chaos because of you.‘ One lone Everyman standing up to the machinery of the
state, to military force, to all the massed weight of the People's Republic -- the largest nation
in the world, comprising more than 1 billion people – all while its all-powerful leaders
remained, as ever, in silent hiding somewhere within the bowels of the Great Hall of the
People … In the unnatural quiet after the Tiananmen Square massacre, with the six-lane
streets eerily empty and a burned-out bus along the side of the road, it fell to the Tank Man
to serve as the last great defender of the peace; an Unknown Soldier in the long human
struggle for human rights.‖ ~ Pico Iyer
―Here‘s this guy who is obviously just out shopping, and finally he‘s just had enough. I
assume he thinks he‘s going to die, but he doesn‘t care because for whatever reason his
statement has become more important than his own life … If somebody had a way of
checking my brain thoughts, this guy probably goes through them every single day. He‘s
become a part of me.‖ ~ Jeff Widener, the journalist who took the iconic Tank Man photo
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