Opinion | In a world rived by protests and coronavirus, whose history and whose rights should matter?
- The quarrel in the US and elsewhere over controversial monuments and the debate over mask wearing as a means to contain Covid-19 highlight the tension between individual rights and communal good
Foreign Affairs magazine devoted its January/February 2018 issue to the topic of how countries have grappled with their past brutality. Museums and public education help explain why these events occur and how we should deal with them as a community. Remembering is painful, discussion is difficult, and blaming deepens the divide.
All individuals, families and nations have blunders, tragedies and scandals that they prefer to forget. Some try to forget, others hide their shame, while a few atone for their past crimes by engaging in philanthropy or doing good deeds. The smart ones hire PR firms to make them look good.
Today we are watching instant history unfold in real time, recorded for posterity by billions of smartphones and cameras. But reducing complex events and trends to posts and tweets paint the world in the false binaries of black and white, good versus evil. Instead of finding solutions to the mess we are in, our emotions override rational thought processes. So we delete what we do not like or blame it on someone else.
Colonial-era statues are toppled and damaged in global Black Lives Matter protests
Such emotions are understandable in a time of trauma. New York Times columnist David Brooks identified the five epic crises that America is going through now: bungling the response to the coronavirus pandemic; dealing with racism; political polarisation; a quasi-religious struggle for social justice, and; economic depression. From this side of the Pacific, it looks more like America going through a “cultural revolution”.