History crime

There's an entry over at GuvWurld that asks of Orwell's 1984 - "Do they read it in schools anymore?"

Well I read it in school, but that was back in 1980 when we all assumed computers and robots would soon free the world of drudgery, and lasers, fiber optics and velcro were only just the begining of a whole series of wonder technologies that would bring a utopian paradise just around the corner...

Back then the year 2000 problem hadn't even been thought of, and indeed that year when I'd be comfortably into my fourth decade seemed impossibly far ahead. No one ever suspected that the next century could usher in steady flow of backward footsteps in the direction of Orwell's 1984.

Those footsteps may seem innocent and ineffective, like Arcata's writing off Harty's questioning of McKinley's reputation as revisionist nonsense. However as GuvWurld points out, no matter how you look at it the revisionists pen is actually firmly in the hands of government now. It should come as now surprise that the words "History is always written by the winners" are droning constantly in the back of my head...

Imagine for a moment, the scene: its summer 2003 and American troops have just arrived in Baghdad and are busy staging the toppling of Saddam's statue. What, I ask myself, would have been their reply if someone had said "Saddam may have had a dodgy past, he may have waged the occasional misguided war against foreign powers, and perhaps at times was overly influenced and aided by external powers, but actually we'd quite like to keep his statue there. You know, its been there for twenty years already so really we should just leave it - for history's sake? I mean, isn't it in keeping with the fine western tradition of honoring dead, or soon to be dead men who's only distinction was being the winner at one time or another. Just because they were killed, assasinated, deposed, or later discredited is no reason at all to topple their place in history..."