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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 9520690" data-attributes="member: 22779">/me steps up on soapbox.  Sorry folks, this might be a bit long and personal, so, feel free to skip.On the notion that facts are attacks.Maybe it's because I've lived in Japan for the past twenty years or so, but, I see just how damaging this notion that facts are attacks really is.  Japan has a ... complicated relationship with it's 20th century history.  If you go to pretty much any museum in Japan, you'd think that history ended in Japan in about 1880, and then started again in 1950.  That sixty year gap is pretty much excised from the conversation.  No museum displays, no documentaries, no teaching it in school.  Nothing.  It's about as buried as it could possibly be.And the argument is that it's the past.  It's been dealt with.  There's no benefit from dragging up the past.  ((Sound familiar?  It sure does to me.))This is where the whole calls for "nuance" thing falls down for me.  I remember some years ago, my daughter was chosen as a child ambassador to Sri Lanka.  She and a handful of others, would travel to Sri Lanka, experience life there and promote Japan.  Fair enough.  Cool job for a 12 year old.  So, I wound up attending a number of the lectures that she had to attend talking about the good stuff about Japan.  Interesting stuff.  But one stood out in my mind really hard.  A professor from the local uni talked about how in the 1920's a pair of Japanese botanists developed a strain of rice that would grow in Taiwan.  Seemed that local Japanese rice wouldn't grow in Taiwan's hotter and wetter climate, so, a new strain had to be developed.  Great scientists.  Doing good work.But, I had a few questions.  Left out of the presentation was any mention of why this rice was being developed.  There was no blight in Taiwan.  No failed crops and Taiwan had been happily growing its own rice for generations.  So, why did it need to be changed.  And therein was the harsh fact.  The rice was grown for Japanese Imperial forces in China who didn't like the locally grown rice and demanded good old Japanese rice.  The farmers in Taiwan were forced to change their crops, not to feed their own people, but, to feed the invading Japanese army.Which rather paints a whole new level of "nuance" to the story.  This wasn't really a story to be proud of.  This was a story of forced labour and cultural imperialism.  So, no.  To me, facts are never, ever an attack.  If the fact was unknown before, but now paints something in a new light?  That's ALWAYS a good thing.  We should never be afraid of facts.  The people who want us to be afraid of facts are always wrong.  They are always trying to force a specific viewpoint on others.  And they should always be pointed out and a big, bright spotlight placed on what they are trying to do.</blockquote>

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