Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
Statues are put up in honor. Taking down statues isn't about erasing history. Complete misread, but seems like the one the cons are pushing. Museums are for archiving history. Don't think anybody is breaking into museums and tearing them apart. Tearing down a Grant statue is stupid.
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Putting up a statue is a part of history. History records the making and placing of the statue. Those who tear down the statue are making history as well. Their little act of history erases the substance of the little historical act of putting up the statue. History is all around us, and is constantly in the making. The new history replaces the old. The old history fades from the consciousness of the new generations.
It is the everyday, visible, history in any community which makes an immediate and repetitious impact that frames it in the minds of the vast majority of those living in or passing through those communities. History that is depicted inside of museums is occasionally (rarely or never for many) visited. History relegated to museums becomes arcane and little noticed. Out of sight, out of mind.
Barbarians have always used as one of their first acts to destroy the civilization and culture of the countries they invade, the defilement and removal of its most visible artifacts which memorialize or symbolize the essence of those they conquer.
To entirely erase the history of a nation requires the total destruction of it and removal of all of its traces. Tearing down statues is just a small start. Then come the books, the art, the institutions, the people who remember, and the writing of the new history--the complete, fundamental, transformation.
Actual kinetic war is the simplest and fastest way to erase history. Political transformation of history takes more time. The Progressive destruction and transformation of the founding elements of our American experiment has been a century in the making. As time has gone by, things gradually progressed at a faster pace.
We are now at a quickening tempo of, and a broader physical assault on, the foundations of American society.