Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Alternatively, we can recognize all humans are all flawed - as you note - and stop being so pious and judgemental. Abstain from getting drunk on moral outrage.
It’s all theatre. What tangible good does it actually achieve? If we were to tear down all the statues and rename all the streets in one community, and leave them all unchanged in another, what measurable, empirical differences would we expect to see in those two communities 20 years later?
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There's certainly an argument to be made there. That said, if I was indigenous I don't know how I'd feel having the place I live in celebrate those that put the very systems in place that led directly to the suffering I currently experience. If we were to tear down all the statues and rename the streets in one community and leave them unchanged in another, the former community would be sending a message of reconciliation and appreciation whereas the latter would not. Is it tangible? No, but at this risk of Godwining this, as a Jew if I lived in Germany I think it would be painful to see statues and streets celebrating Hitler, Goebbels and others.
Why does the affect have to be measurable and empirical for it to matter? (Even that bastion of political correctness, Russia, has removed almost all of the Stalin statues.) If your grandfather was tortured and killed and then the city you lived in erected a statue or named a street after his killer what measurable affect would it have on the community? What if that killer killed 10%, 20% or 50% of your communities ancestors?
To dismiss it as theatre is to dismiss the emotional trauma still being experienced to this day. It also ignores the very nature of the thing. If it doesn't matter what you name a street why was the street named after anyone to begin with? If it makes no measurable difference, why were statues of the powerful erected at all, or especially in the areas where they used their power to cause suffering to others instead of a museum at most? All the worst/best despots and tyrants know that symbols matter. They play a vital role in gently assimilating the larger public into their desired group-think. However, their most impressive feat is to convince those people to defend those symbols as inconsequential, even long after the tyrant is gone.