What if the George Washington was a cannibal?

[Skeptic Bob]

First, for the record, I am not part of the crowd saying George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues should come down because they were slave holders. I find most of the statue outrage from both sides kind of silly.

But it got me to thinking. For those of us who don't think the statues should come down, is there anything we could learn about them that would trump their historical contributions enough that we WOULDN'T want their statues or them on our money or honored in any way?

What if we learned they were raping 8 year olds or cannibalizing children or some other horrible thing like that? Would we change our minds or would we still be able to compartmentalize their atrocities from their contributions?

This is just a thought experiment to examine how we form our opinions on these things. I am still trying to figure out I would answer my own question.

 

[TheGoverness]

First, for the record, I am not part of the crowd saying George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues should come down because they were slave holders. I find most of the statue outrage from both sides kind of silly.

But it got me to thinking. For those of us who don't think the statues should come down, is there anything we could learn about them that would trump their historical contributions enough that we WOULDN'T want their statues or them on our money or honored in any way?

What if we learned they were raping 8 year olds or cannibalizing children or some other horrible thing like that? Would we change our minds or would we still be able to compartmentalize their atrocities from their contributions?

This is just a thought experiment to examine how we form our opinions on these things. I am still trying to figure out I would answer my own question.

I don't know. That's a really hard question.

 

[FastPace]

Well... you know... Abraham Lincoln, as lost to history as this is, was in fact a Vampire Killer.

First, for the record, I am not part of the crowd saying George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues should come down because they were slave holders. I find most of the statue outrage from both sides kind of silly.

But it got me to thinking. For those of us who don't think the statues should come down, is there anything we could learn about them that would trump their historical contributions enough that we WOULDN'T want their statues or them on our money or honored in any way?

What if we learned they were raping 8 year olds or cannibalizing children or some other horrible thing like that? Would we change our minds or would we still be able to compartmentalize their atrocities from their contributions?

This is just a thought experiment to examine how we form our opinions on these things. I am still trying to figure out I would answer my own question.

Is cannibalizing children bad now or something? Or is it just okay to be a cannibal so long as the one you are munching on used to be above age of 17?

The Aztecs were huge cannibals. Their upper-class anyways. And within the Aztec religion the Aztecs had many gods (fallen angels/demons in this case I'm persuaded). One of them, every year that they offered sacrifices too, was a god that they would select a certain number of children for, to pull out their finger nails and thereby offer up the screams and blood of the children to this god. I think it was some god for agriculture or no man-made climate change.

But I'm not really totally against assimilating in some Aztec culture we might consider kind of "morbid" by today's Western standards--well for holidays or whatever.

Then we have the Christian Vlad the Impaler. The "original Dracula."






I'm skeptical of the white washing popularity. I prefer show casing great men have had great flaws. That even some men honored and esteemed--or just feared and very powerful--may be doing life sentence incarceration in the afterlife.

For the most part. Maybe I could be persuaded otherwise on statues and memorial for certain people. I have no firm conclusion made on the issue.

Maybe wee need to erect more statues of surgeons and civil engineers and less on military persons and political figures. How many lives has access to clean drinking and showering water saved over years, decades, over more than a century from civil engineers? Compared to say the number of lives George Washington saved?




https://www.asme.org/getmedia/759894e1-2be9-4a23-942b-2d2c272336a5/166-Milwaukee-River-Flushing-Station-1888.aspx

The Milwaukee Metropolitan
Sewerage District is proud to
accept the historic designation of the
Milwaukee River Flushing Station by the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This
honor says much about the circumstances that
not only brought about MMSD’s existence, but
which define who we are today, as we head into
the 21st century.

The Reynolds’ screw pump was the largest
water pump in the world at the time. A coal-
fired steam engine drove the pump, which
consisted of a 4 bladed propeller-type screw 14
feet in diameter. The blades could move an
astonishing 41,764 cubic feet of water per
minute.

 

[tessaesque]

At one point in time it was socially acceptable to own slaves. The idea that it was socially acceptable is abhorrent, of course, but at the time popular opinion supported the practice. If there were an extended period during Washington's life when cannibalism was a socially acceptable practice I think that fact would need to be considered when deciding whether or not his participation in the practice should be grounds for negating the legacy of the actions for which a statue was erected. Further, unless the statue was erected specifically to celebrate his ownership of slaves or practice of cannibalism, I think removal on the basis of either practice is a bit...extreme.

All people are flawed. There's a skeleton looming in just about everybody's closet. It would be hard to aspire to be greater than ourselves if we weighed our worst qualities as a more significant indication of our character than we did our best.

 

[Rexedgar]

Each period in history is hard to mix with another period, generations apart and come up with parallels using one period’s standards applied to the other.....good post!

 

[KevinKohler]

Wouldn't matter.


What if the person who cures cancer also liked to sodomise babies? Would it matter to you if you had cancer?

 

[KevinKohler]

These are white people, first world problems. At the end of the day, it's the results that matter, not the process.

 

[FastPace]

Wouldn't matter.


What if the person who cures cancer also liked to sodomise babies? Would it matter to you if you had cancer?

You have to have a pretty small pecker to sodomize a baby. No, scratch that. Extremely small. Not too mention so disturbed you need to become a patient of the hospital--in a straight-jacket.

 

[Abbazorkzog]

I immediately thought of this when I saw the title:

 

[lurchadams]

First, for the record, I am not part of the crowd saying George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues should come down because they were slave holders. I find most of the statue outrage from both sides kind of silly.

But it got me to thinking. For those of us who don't think the statues should come down, is there anything we could learn about them that would trump their historical contributions enough that we WOULDN'T want their statues or them on our money or honored in any way?

What if we learned they were raping 8 year olds or cannibalizing children or some other horrible thing like that? Would we change our minds or would we still be able to compartmentalize their atrocities from their contributions?

This is just a thought experiment to examine how we form our opinions on these things. I am still trying to figure out I would answer my own question.

Cannibalizing children would be a bridge too far. Now, if they just discretely had a nibble every once in awhile of a Ku Klux Klan member? I think most people could see their way past that.

 

[KevinKohler]

You have to have a pretty small pecker to sodomize a baby. No, scratch that. Extremely small. Not too mention so disturbed you need to become a patient of the hospital--in a straight-jacket.

And yet, if you had terminal cancer...

 

[shrubnose]

First, for the record, I am not part of the crowd saying George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues should come down because they were slave holders. I find most of the statue outrage from both sides kind of silly.

But it got me to thinking. For those of us who don't think the statues should come down, is there anything we could learn about them that would trump their historical contributions enough that we WOULDN'T want their statues or them on our money or honored in any way?

What if we learned they were raping 8 year olds or cannibalizing children or some other horrible thing like that?

Would we change our minds or would we still be able to compartmentalize their atrocities from their contributions?

This is just a thought experiment to examine how we form our opinions on these things. I am still trying to figure out I would answer my own question.

They didn't do those horrible things.They were slave owners who fought for free rights for the White men in the colonies.

Think about that a little bit.They were both men who did good and evil things.