The digital era is not kind to preserving history.
The garbage on Twitter is literally garbage and propaganda. The bleating of various mouthpieces are only useful in coordination with events and real documents.
Today, people just throw a bunch of words on the internet without thought or care, and if people react to it, Yay! We're an influencer!
The closest thing are postcards from the early 20th century, and they are more banal then the garbage on Twitter. The difference is the egotistical impact of the platform. Most successful Twitter influencers who aren’t domain specialists are monsters.
We barely know about the Persian empire for example. It's mostly been preserved by plays written by a greek dude.
“During the early 21st century as “social media” began to emerge, various political forces attempted to manipulate it to achieve their goals. Luckily, only the bad people were unsuccessful.”
"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." ~ Eames, "Inception"
We can (and do) archive this stuff in a way that doesn't go up in smoke from a single library fire. It's searchable too.
Statues are often used to glorify or celebrate famous historical figures. I think Confederate statues would work well in a museum with context explaining the horrors of slavery, but to display them in public places is more glory than they deserve.
Many Confederates no doubt showed courage and other commendable qualities, but I do not agree with celebrating people who betrayed their country to fight for slavery.
The answer to “Where do we draw the line?” should always be “somewhere”, instead of just throwing up your hands and admitting defeat.
Not all history is good, and not all is bad.
Removal of statues, to me, is like trying to hide history.
Statues usually have some plaque describing who the person was, and what they did. Why can't that plaque say the guy owned slaves, or was a confederate general or whatever? Ya, these guys were on the wrong side of history, but there's still things to be learned.
One of the best military minds of all time, for example, happened to be a confederate. Should we learn nothing from this man aside from the fact that he was a confederate?
If you want to learn about local history, you absolutely go to city hall, or wherever you local clerks office is.