Headlines were made as a monument was dedicated at this year’s Heritage Festival.
Well, I was born without that part of my brain that gets excited about monuments. In fact, they remind me of a story I read in a children’s history book. The details are faded, but a famous traveler recorded the story of a great king who in his youth was drunk and disorderly. He would often have to go to the oracles when “arrested” for crimes. When he came to power, he essentially fired all the oracles that had acquitted him, because he knew they were fakes. One day, the whimsical king ordered all the people to turn in their basins used for washing feet. There was always the perception that the truer use of the basins had been sanitized for a child’s book written in the way back when. He had the golden basins melted down and formed into a big image, which he ordered the people to worship. As they did, he laughed at them and said, “This is your foot basins, you silly, silly fools.” (I paraphrase.)
That was the best reason I’ve ever heard to build monuments – to play a practical joke. Another might be to give artists some money. Other than that, I wonder if government likes to build monuments to train the masses to deceive themselves into believing whatever the powers that be want to feed them. Maybe they identify dissidents by the way they roll their eyes.
