Russia declares war on memes

[Zoraptor]

 

Meh, whitewashing history is something everyone does. Not like the average British doco on Churchill mentions the crappy stuff he did, or the US doesn't celebrate a genocidal maniac on their bank notes, or the Poles get all knicker knotted about getting partitioned but didn't do it to Czechoslovakia nor stab Lithuania in the back when they were fighting the soviets. And our national myth involves lionising lots of naive chaps going off to die utterly pointlessly in Turkey for the benefit and at the command of imperialist buffoons half a world away.

 

This illustrates the worst of cynicism.

 

 

Nah, it's realism. The two are frequently interchangeable because much of the time reality does suck.

 

We should be morally obliged to be mad when people try to revise history to justify atrocitites

Ideally, yes, ideally all history should be objective truth telling that gives the facts and allows the reader to make informed conclusions rather than having the author preach their views to their audience. Ideally.

 

Realistically there (1) ain't enough time in the day to get upset at that as you'd get upset at pretty much everything short of Thucydides (2) different people get outraeged!!! at different, selective things and (3) there's no way any selection of people will all agree on what constitutes objective and what constitutes a fact- see any wikipedia article on any slightly controversial subject, albeit wikipedia doesn't actually claim to be fact based, only verifiable; which ought to be easier. In some ways I wish more people were as honest in that appraisal, in others I wish more people would be fact based. Either way I might as well wish for world peace and an end to famine while I'm at it, they're both as realistic a wish.

 

 

You won't find a single country that even approaches frank and honest in their view of their own history. It's not what countries do, at heart they're just like sports fans- we're skillful, honest and brave supporting the bestest team in the entire world; otoh the referee is biased and the opposition are dishonest thugs who dive and cheat.

 

Challenge me, I have a frank and honest view of the history of my country

 

Country overall, not every given individual in a country. I'd say I had a pretty objective view of my country's history for example- I would think that, after all- but there's plenty of generally accepted stuff in our history I disagree with.

 

Doomsday from Wing Commander would be better, since he's a maori so at least ultimately from New Zealand Taiwan. Has a french name, but meh. Xan's cool too, though.