What a weird, self defeating line of thought. Yes, wielding the collective power of a larger group of people will do more damage. Was anyone under the impression that a loose tribe of 30 dudes could physically accomplish the same feats as 30 million?

Again, that is an incredible technical achievement but it’s not inherently good or bad. A ton of problems today come from the proliferation of tech, maybe we’d be better off if he studied something else. Coming from someone who studied and can professionally appreciate his work: it’s not exactly discovering lifesaving vaccines.

He’s a relatable role model, especially for people who can are unfairly persecuted today. But that’s not the same as being a notable figure playing a role on the historical stage.

Edit: I’m not mad about down votes, but disappointed nobody has provided any argument all.

Is there any evidence that he tried to use his discovery to advance the wellbeing of the human race? Does his estate do any public outreach against the atrocities of the information age? I genuinely cannot find that. Even Alfred Nobel is still doing penance for inventing a new way to blow up rocks, and he’s been dead for nearly 130 years.

Taken alone, creating the theoretical model for modern computer science is as laudable as inventing the internal combustion engine. Both are the innocuous roots that directly sprout to massive problems in our modern world. Not sure why that in particular needs celebration?

Its telling that your example is someone explicitly kept out of the public eye during his life. Basically any account of Turing is from personal friends or his professional work. He was a generally good person and great scientist that helped defeat the nazis, but he’s only celebrated by progressives for his persecution as a gay man.

I struggle to find any major social cause he publicly championed or records of his views on controversial topics. I’d like to be wrong, but it’s easy to not have a mixed record as a private citizen. Nobody was grilling him to free slaves or asking his opinion on systemic injustice.

Einstein is a contemporary comparable. He was a great scientist, opposed the nazis, and by most accounts a decent guy. He was even had to flee his homeland to escape persecution as a jew. Clearly lots of parallels. The main difference being he was an idol in his own day so we have way more first hand accounts.

Turns out he was a socialist with varying views on communism, had shifting support for zionism and wrote rascist shit in his travel diaries. You could probably find a quote like Roosevelt’s and slap it on a picture of him, that doesn’t sum up his life.

Lmao what the fuck is this take? Somebody tell Egypt to start tearing down the pyramids. There are 1000s of Roman monuments still standing that celebrate specific conquests of slavers. Why are there still statues of shitty imperial colonizers all over Europe?

You only get your blood-monuments torn down when your state is systematically destroyed.

You must hang with a pretty progressive crowd, which is exactly my point. You could pick 10 of the poorest quartile of Americans and I’d bet the house that every single one wants to redistribute that money to themselves.

They’ve probably never left their state, let alone visited another country. You don’t have to benefit from an injust system to want to perpetuate it.

Why do you think ending USAID resonates with the poor? Why would someone struggling to pay rent volunteer a huge chunk of their nation’s wealth to go halfway across the world?

61% of Americans explicitly don’t want to increase foreign aid, which is a much less controversial topic than actual reparations.

In 200 years, after theoretical major reparations, would it be unfair to call 61%+ of Americans people of their time? Or are they all demons for participating in a regressive system?

Getting back to George W., total abolition was a severe minority position at the time. Even up to the divisive start of the Civil War, estimates are well under 10% support for northern voters and functionally 0% for southerners. Add in the 18% of the population in slavery, and a random sampling would get you in the low 20% supporting total abolition.

Washington was a third generation slave owner, and by all accounts he died supporting the gradual abolition of the slavery via ending slave trade. Not exactly a paradigm of virtue but it made him a tiny bit progressive relative to most of his peers.

We can’t retroactively apply our modern moral framework just because there are a handful of historical peers who were more progressive. Save the fire and brimstone for the people that actively deserve it.

For example Mark Twain built his career around being a racist funnyman, and held genuinely regressive views for the time. He doesn’t get half as much shit because his face isn’t carved on a mountain. He literally fought in the Civil War for the slavers. Why do we care more about Washington’s dentures?

??? Do they really though? I rarely see the sentiment that literally all ill-gotten gains forming the foundation of their nation’s power and stability should be returned (and definitely not from people benefitting). Mostly it’s just tossing a few cultural artifacts, some meager reparations, and cutting back on some luxury like chocolate because it makes them feel bad. That’s the same as freeing a few slaves after you profit off them for your whole life (and we established that makes you a demon).

Or are you arguing about injustices in classes? If everyone being exploited by the rich agreed to dismantle that system it would be done by now. Doesn’t matter if you’re poor, you participate in the problem.

You probably just want your exploitation to be marginally less than the guys on the bottom, you don’t care about the core issue. Therefore being opposed to the compete dismantling of our current economic system is regressive and 90% of earth’s population are demons

Every single democracy in Europe is younger than America’s by an order of magnitude. Most have gone through 2 or 3 forms of government since it was founded. You have the luxury of not “being the villains” because your governments haven’t been around long enough to have nasty shit stick to them. They were all emphatically on board with doing vile stuff to stop the communist boogeyman, they just let America’s guns to do it.

The American exceptionalism narrative was born out of WWII, because they really were the “best” industrialized country by virtue of not being a smoking crater. Every state that has reached or is on the path to being a modern nation has blood on their hands, America just hasn’t had the chance to symbolically wash them.

There are people today rightly pointing out the looting of the global South by the global North, and yet nobody in the north is volunteering to give it all back. What disgusting human beings, if they had any decency they’d give it back and ritually kill themselves

They absolutely would have if they had the resources to swing it

Ah, but your regressive and racist system built by rascist white guys 250 years ago entrenches the power of regressive and racist white guys. Therefore you are a bad person.

Let’s ignore the fact that every single poll shows more Americans favoring progressive policies. Let’s ignore the systemic disenfranchisement of everyone who’s not a rich white man (and their candidates still lose the popular vote every time). Any random person in San Diego is the exact same as someone living 1600 miles away in Omaha.

Why don’t we apply the same revulsion to, idk, Belgians? King Leopold II directly killed ~10 million people in his own private colony. Doing that 116 years ago is better than George Washington freeing his last 123 slaves when he died 228 years ago?

Is that not how dentures worked at the time? Any tooth you got was from someone so poor they had to sell it or who had it taken from them.

Modern equivalent would be displaying shoes made in a sweatshop. Yeah terrible practice, but so commonplace its generally not a huge reflection on the character of the owner.

Thanks for appreciating the struggle, I’ll drink to that 🍻

Even looking strictly at the voting population, Trump got less than 50% of the votes; more people voted “not Trump” than voted for him. That’s before you account for the majority of 90 million non-voters holding left leaning views (studies say irregular voters are as low as 40% republican voters) with either no acceptable candidate to support or living under voter suppression.

Did you know it’s possible to with the presidency with as low as 23% of the popular vote? Guess which color states have a massively oversized impact on the electoral college…

The people getting shot are not Trump voters at this point. More specifically, people that are opposed to absolutely destroying other countries are the first ones targeted.

Even if we all suffered perfectly evenly, only 22% of Americans voted for Trump. Please keep the other 78% in mind.