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Let's peel this apart a bit. Some of what you've listed has come to pass. In particular, statues are being taken down, and streets and buildings are being renamed. Let's look first at the former. Statues are historical only in that they are an effort to erect and protect. Otherwise, they are not historical records in and of themselves; they do not tell us history. They are artifacts. Right now, some statues are being torn down, but in every case that I've examined, somebody asked for the statues to be removed first. This is a community-driven statue removal effort, not a party-driven effort. The streets and buildings are curious. We know why buildings are renamed: Buildings are named after people, but it turns out that people are horrible to each other, and so we regret the nomenclature. Building owners get to do this. I don't like that I have to learn a new name for the local arena every few years, but that is how our society works, and it's mostly driven by money and people regretting each other. Similarly, streets are renamed because people are either embarrassed about somebody from the past, or extremely proud of somebody in the present (who will be certainly a future embarrassment!) But that's about where it stops. Which records are being destroyed or falsified, and who is doing that work? Who is rewriting which books, and which words have been changed? Who is altering photos and pictures, and what are they changing? Concretely, who is using a permanent marker to draw on official government materials and tearing up official documents? Who is attempting to stop the publication of books? Who is trying to suppress the sharing of photos taken during the past few decades at high-class social mixers? Finally, who is this Party that is always right? Who is it that has about 10% of the population within themselves, commands the highest positions of government without concern for other parties, and focuses on appeasing the proles with meaningless slogans and handouts while avoiding meaningful social improvements? |