It's a standard part of every revolution: The gleeful citizens amass in the square and topple the towering statue of the dethroned despot. And then they dance for joy.
It never works the other way around. The citizens never get together and solemnly erect a statue of the despot to serve as a reminder of a dark and brutal time so that future generations will never forget what happened. No, the only way you'll ever see a scene like that is if you take a video of a toppling ceremony and run it backward.
That's because we don't erect statues for the purpose of scaring us all straight. That's not how statues work. If it were, instead of that humongous statue of Jesus looming over Rio de Janeiro, there would be a humongous statue of Satan.
Statues are not built for the purpose of upsetting people, especially in public parks. They're supposed to fill the beholder with warm feelings, like pride and/or patriotism. Whichever person commissioned the statue felt some reverence for the subject, at least at the time it was erected, and they want you to feel it too. If you decide to go hang out in a public park on a gorgeous sunny day, the statues are not supposed to ruin your picnic.
And we're not erasing history when we topple them. We don't need public statues to remind us of our infamous past. I don't see a lot of statues of Richard Nixon around, but I still remember Watergate.
Moreover, the legitimacy of some public statues can't be salvaged by putting them in the proper historical context either. I suppose it's true that no human is purely good or purely evil. Take, for example, Robert E. Lee. He may well have had a soft spot for kittens or something like that. But that's not why there are still statues of him and why schools and highways and such are named after him. I don't think you'll see a plaque at the base of a Robert E. Lee statue that says, "Robert E. Lee led the army that defended slavery but, in all fairness, he also had a soft spot for kittens, which is why this statue is still here."
Nobody reads those plaques anyway. You see a statue of Robert E. Lee and you know that it's there because he led the army that defended slavery and that filled the people responsible for erecting it with warm feelings like pride and/or patriotism. And the reason it remains is that a lot of people still feel the same way.
That's all there is to know. No more analysis than that is required to understand what it's all about. Humans don't build monuments to ambiguity.
So I love all this toppling. I say top-top-topple away! I hope I can join in on one someday. Seeing them fall fills me with warm feelings like pride and/or patriotism. I feel like there's a revolution going on.
