1/ Vipassana-ing friend of mine said deep thing about wounds of history: someone has to experience repressed/deferred pain for it to go away
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2/ There is a Genghis Khan statue in Mongolia. He's still central to their identity
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3/ In India, people are *still* trying to rewrite history to paint Hindu losers of battles with Muslims from 13th, 16th centuries as victors
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4/ By global festering-wound standards, the legacy of Robert E. Lee has not even scabbed over. This will take a LONG time to process.
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6/ No matter what your politics, Robert E. Lee existed and means something in the stories some people need to tell themselves to go on
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7/ So does Hitler. There may be no big statues of him, but he remains a potent symbol in global history-writing. Live cultural currency.
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8/ Beyond the historical specifics of their stories, heroes of alt-histories like Hitler and Lee are like currencies: of blood debts
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9/ Today Genghis Khan is a healed wound for the most part, not an active cultural currency. We are free to view him as pure history data
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