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I'm well aware that quoting from 1984 isn't exactly innovative, but in my opinion no other quote describes as succinctly what we've seen happening in the name o

I'm well aware that quoting from 1984 isn't exactly innovative, but in my opinion no other quote describes as succinctly what we've seen happening in the name of Diversity, Equity (not equality), Inclusion for a few years now. "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

scrozart 3y ago
Rewriting history and books is actually exactly what's happening in Florida under ostensibly fascist rule, which is precisely what Orwell was referring to. I don't want my street named after a slave owner, period. No, it doesn't destroy history to change it. History recorded safely, in many other places, is exactly why street names and books are being updated - to include more accurate, less sugar-coated retellings of history. If you have a problem with the increased scrutiny and exposure of how deeply our systematic failures run, you're the problem.
allturtles 3y ago
I think both your comment and the reply by scrozart are hyperbolic. A particular person accruing perhaps undue historical acclaim in the popular press relative to the actual scope of their accomplishments happens all the time. In this case, yes, there's a lot of "wanting it to be true" involved because the tale of a black woman mathematician working in the 1960s makes for a heroic story of triumph over adversity. Per the "How Did It All Get Started?" section of the PDF it seems like the misconstrual of what happened began not as some kind of woke project in the last 10 years, but in the 1960s with the mathematician in question, proud of her accomplishments, inflating them beyond their real significance. And then the tale grew in the telling as the events receded in her memory.

scrozart 3y ago

Rewriting history and books is actually exactly what's happening in Florida under ostensibly fascist rule, which is precisely what Orwell was referring to. I don't want my street named after a slave owner, period. No, it doesn't destroy history to change it. History recorded safely, in many other places, is exactly why street names and books are being updated - to include more accurate, less sugar-coated retellings of history. If you have a problem with the increased scrutiny and exposure of how deeply our systematic failures run, you're the problem.

allturtles 3y ago

I think both your comment and the reply by scrozart are hyperbolic. A particular person accruing perhaps undue historical acclaim in the popular press relative to the actual scope of their accomplishments happens all the time. In this case, yes, there's a lot of "wanting it to be true" involved because the tale of a black woman mathematician working in the 1960s makes for a heroic story of triumph over adversity. Per the "How Did It All Get Started?" section of the PDF it seems like the misconstrual of what happened began not as some kind of woke project in the last 10 years, but in the 1960s with the mathematician in question, proud of her accomplishments, inflating them beyond their real significance. And then the tale grew in the telling as the events receded in her memory.