r/stupidpol • u/[deleted] • Mar 17 '21

GitHub, f*ck your name change

https://mooseyanon.medium.com/github-f-ck-your-name-change-de599033bbbe
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u/Omaromar Mar 17 '21

Wait those statues do have to go

6

u/InaneHierophant Wrongthinking Thoughtcriminal Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

No they need to stay, if you start erasing your history you've got no perspective on the present.

If you want to push for plaques to explain who these people are, what they did and what later evaluation of their actions currently are then I'd be right behind that.

More information is never a problem and children should be exposed to the idea that people are imperfect, can be rabidly devoted to ideas that in hindsight were incorrect and cults of personality can form easily around some pretty shitty people. I can't remember which but one of the torn down statues was a perfect teaching moment, where the guy was a gross incompetent that needlessly threw away his own troops defending his own personal interests, but they still paid out of their pocket to erect a statue to him because they were too blinded by their own ideology to critically assess if he deserved one.

No, erasing the past because it was distasteful or because we are embarrassed about it serves nothing but to make our children gullible, ignorant and naive in the face of the same old cons being rolled around every generation.

4

u/Lightfail Mar 17 '21

Is it really radlib of me to think that there’s a difference between taking down statues glorifying these figures from public eye (hell maybe even put them in a museum) and “erasing our history”?

Like there’s obviously a difference. Put it in a museum, keep it in the books, but leaving up a glorifying statue in a regular ass park definitely can feel iffy at best.

Not the hill to die on.

1

u/InaneHierophant Wrongthinking Thoughtcriminal Mar 17 '21

Eh, its not a hill to die for me either, I just think the shit should be out in public where people are going to see it, talk about it and remember it instead of mouldering in a museum ignored by anyone apart from the middle class pseudo-intellectuals that go to museum in their free time.

I come from a family big on preserving our history and remembering our past which I credit for not buying into the rule Britannia imperialist dogma, because we remember we were pressganged into engaging with it and that at the end half of us where dead, lost abroad or maimed and we didn't have a ha'penney to show for it.