Scars

[Saint Peter]

When they turn to rioting, looting, arson, assault, and murder they've lost the high ground. As far as I'm concerned the cops can set up overlapping fields of fire and break out the m-249's.

There is no high ground. Definitely not if we are mowing down citizens with military weapons.

 

[bellisarius]

There is no high ground. Definitely not if we are mowing down citizens with military weapons.

Common criminals, felons.

 

[SpeareChucker]

It's easy to have empathy when they are destroying someone else's life...






That's the truly sad part about human nature.

 

[Saint Peter]

Common criminals, felons.

Possibly. This should all be determined by a court of law.

Not the court of an out of control cop leaning into a neck.

 

[cinnefille]

I'm a history junkie, I cry less over people than lost ancient ruins.

((Or my dog. It took the third heart attack to kill my dog, and even then she lived seven hours still last night. (Dogs don't normally survive any of that sort.) At least she went down like she lived, chasing, so let it be happy eternal chase for her. Sorry.))

Every occasion differs, and it often can be argued we become poorer losing even the most controversial monuments, still, I realize that tearing down statues can be more cathartic moment of living history than even erecting them -- especially because they are usually erected by edict of powers that be, but teared down by crowds experiencing high of mental unity. (Moreover, in a way, it even could arguably be a harmless substitute for a killing spree.)

Perhaps Lithuania did it best, they moved all the hundreds of Lenin's (and yes, it's literally hundreds) and few other occupation monuments all to a single location where they now serve as ridicule for tourists.

But as ironic the main Lenin in Riga was, erected at the far end of the Freedom Monument linden alley, looking away from it and waving his hand towards St. Petersburg like saying, hey guys, I'm from over there, he had to go, and was freaking too big to relocate. And of course, the Freedom Street was bearing his name while he was standing there. Of course, the Freedom Monument itself replaced statue of Peter the Great, erected just twenty years prior celebrating two hundred years since siege of Riga that killed over half of citizens thanks to plague and famine (still it wasn't captured, they managed to negotiate favorable terms of surrender, reinstating German landlords rights Kingdom of Sweden had stripped).

That Peter's horse looked away from the Old City too, and I wonder had it all four horseshoes -- he allegedly lost one, forced to run from the city, busted and insulted by a whore (he had spent the night with) in an attempt to personally scout the city fortifications incognito.

The important thing is to remember, to document and teach the young what monuments used to be where and why, and when and why they were put down or replaced, by whom and by what. The hard part is to make it all fun.

Speaking of Lenin. It's a weird time in my life,
that I'm now gradually tuning out of Western publications and leaders, and tuning into Russian or Eastern European ones:


Poland's Andrzej Duda up against EU values as he makes pre-election vow to protect children from 'foreign ideology of LGBT'
"LGBT propaganda" will be kept out of Polish public institutions. Parents will be the ones primarily responsible for how their kids are brought up and they will decide if their kids need sex education and other extra-curricular offerings at school.
ANDRZEJ DUDA:
"this is not why my parents' generation for 40 years struggled to expel communist ideology from schools, so that it could not be foisted on children, could not brainwash and indoctrinate them...
"They did not fight so that we would now accept that another ideology, even more destructive to man, would come along, an ideology which under the clichés of respect and tolerance hides deep intolerance".

https://www.rt.com/news/491409-poland-president-lgbt-ideology/

BBC and other liberal Western press deemed him a homophobic nazi for that.




So sorry about your dog. They're family.