History is full of bad stuff. Pretty much every beloved historical figure has skeletons in their closet, because they were human. Also, people seem to not understand historical context. There are things that make sense at the time that no longer make sense now. I don’t see why we demonize people for doing things that were perfectly fine according to the mores at the time. Yes, in hindsight a lot of things look bad and some of these figures might’ve looked back and regretted their actions eventually, but they usually acted in accordance with their time. Humans are not omniscient, it is not reasonable to ask us to act in a way that won’t offend people hundreds of years from now because we have no idea what people’s values will be then.
I’m not suggesting we forgive people who engaged in genocide or other horrors, but people need to understand the historical context of one’s actions rather than just blindly demonizing. Things are not black and white, there are always shades of grey.
