Thread by @normative

The thread is sort of fascinating because you can tell McNally knows Forrest is indefensible—he just falls back on “…but they’ll come for Washington next!” Also sort of a sad admission that everyone else the state venerates is repulsive. Maybe you need new heroes.

https://twitter.com/janecoaston/status/1418276427544285186

FWIW, the “redemptive arc” is that at the very, very end of his life Forrest made a speech that contradicted the racist ideals he’d fought for his entire life. But all the actual achievements he’s honored for were in service to slavery and white supremacy.

If the best defense someone can offer of you is: “Well, on his deathbed he seemed to recognize that his entire life’s work had been devoted to evil,” maybe… you don’t get a statue for that?

Looking at the reporting on this also reminds me how much I despise the “don’t judge the past by contemporary standards” dodge. Because absolutely, yes, that is exactly what you should do when the question is who & what deserves to be honored in the present.

If you’re concened with personal moral culpability, then yeah, “the standards of the time” are certainly relevant. But who cares about assessing the personal blameworthiness of long-dead people? They’re statues. They exist to assert values to the present.

Also “the standards of the time” nearly always means “the standards imposed by the people who held power at the time.” Stalin was awesome by the standards of his day, because he was a vicious enough bastard to impose his standards on his day.

A particularly weird dodge in the case of Forrest, given that (a) plenty of people in his own day viewed him as a contemptible war criminal, and (b) this bust wasn’t some centuries-old relic: It was placed at the Capitol in the 1970s.

I know, I know, the 70s were another time. They didn’t understand that war crimes in defense of slavery and the KKK were bad yet.