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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32857 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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A lot, as otherwise they wouldn't have their city.

The people of Odessa seem to hate Russian imperialism more than they are grateful for the one time she demanded a city be built on their soil.

So I reckon they'd prefer to live in village shacks as barbarians (also in the original sense of the word) - i.e. not in a city - than to suffer that statue to stand?

You're proposing a nonexistent dichotomy in the first place.

There is no law that forbids toppling statues of founders once they are no longer aligned with the current ideology/national myth/what have you. You're not owed your legacy forever and ever, deal with it.

Vandalism is morally reprehensible. I think that's a universal enough maxim to be natural law even.

I mean the fifth commandment is right there. Destroying the legacy of the dead for temporal power might be popular but I think it's ridiculous to argue that there is no principle proscribing such behavior.

Vandalism is morally reprehensible

"Vandalism" of a recently erected statue? If they were destroying old art then I'd also denounce the vandalism. But pulling down some post-Soviet statue is not that.

What's the inverse statute of limitations on desecrating art in your opinion? Ten years? A century? Five minutes?

I don't think time enters into it really so much as intent. This is just the same symbolic warfare people always engage in which is inherently ruinous to our common legacy.

I opposed even communist statues being destroyed on principle. If you hate Catherine the Great or Robert E. Lee or Buddha so much make a museum out of it, otherwise stop destroying art for petty squabbles.

There is very real warfare going on in Ukraine, I'll remind you.

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