riskllama wrote:yeah, altering history so as not to upset a few people is just dumb.
You cannot alter history; time only flows in one direction.
What you can alter is people's perception of history, and this is a process that goes on all the time. Most of it is good: when I was a kid we still believed that knights were good men, pious, charitable, and pure of heart, who took up arms to serve justice, defend the weak, and clear the roads of cutthroats and thieves. Today we know that in fact, knights were mostly brutish thugs who extorted protection money from the weak, often robbed, murdered, and raped the peasantry, and only bothered with hunting cutthroats and thieves when there happened to be a bounty available. Truth is slowly but surely pushing aside the myth.
Other times, some of it is stupid: simply replacing old myths with new. The old myth of the courageous selfless Bolshevik fighting against a cruel and savage Cossack has now been replaced with a romantic new notion of a courageous selfless Cossack fighting against a cruel and savage Bolshevik. That
is stupid, but it's the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, I see truth winning out more often than not. Sometimes old myths are replaced with new, but more often a more truthful and balanced reality comes out.
That is much of what is happening in the U.S. today. For 100 years a myth has been fostered, of courageous and selfless Confederate soldiers patriotically defending their homes and the honour of their states, against a cold and heartless Northern war machine, controlled by the bankers of New York and motivated only by profit. The question of slavery has been mostly ignored or pooh-poohed as inconsequential. That myth is bullshit, and it is now being exposed as such. Now comes the tough part: will it be replaced by truth or by alternate myths. There is an alternate myth being promoted, pretty much the flip side of the old one, where all the Northerners are altruistic abolitionists and all the Southerners are slave-whipping sadists. It's not clear whether the new myth will replace the old one in the popular imagination or whether in fact most people will come to know a more balanced and nuanced truth.
What is certain is that the pendulum is swinging, and when that happens there is certainly room for extremist impulses.