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Comment by openquery | Hacker News Reader

Let's finish the quote.

> the intelligence & character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community.

It doesn't strike me as crazy that a guy who was hanging out with Gödel and von Neumann all day [0] might think this way.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Resident_schol...

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if you want to finish the quote it should also be taken in context. the quote is an answer to the question of why people go to war and kill each other

People are overly charitable with Einstein because they view him as more grandfatherly and less of an asshole than most of the classic super genius types of history. That's based almost entirely on his image, which has been well sheltered, and his literal image (how he comes across in old black & white photos; oh look, golly, that's soooo cute, he has his tongue sticking out! look at that hair!).

Back in reality, Einstein likely had an ego the size of a large galaxy, like all the rest. I don't know that I've ever read about someone being similarly famous and them not having an unhealthy outsized ego. The fame always wins.

The masses are very commonly wrong about their adored historical figures though. Gandhi was exceptionally vile in his beliefs. Mother Teresa was a sadist that clearly enjoyed torturing people that had AIDS. FDR was a racist that put Japanese Americans in camps. Che was a sociopathic extreme homophobe and mass murderer. Napoleon was one of the great genocidal maniacs of history, almost on par with Hitler in the death and destruction he caused in attempted conquering. Bill Cosby, well, you know. And on it goes forever.

Perhaps you’re being a bit too uncharitable to overcompensate?

I’ve never heard of this, and the only sources I can find for the claim you made about mother Teresa make claims that the organization that mother Teresa started would refuse patients pain medication out of misguided notions. I’m curious what specifically you’re referring to here.

And as for:

> FDR was a racist that put Japanese Americans in camps

I wouldn’t go so far to say that FDR was racist for doing this. America was literally bombed and dragged into a war, and other countries were also placing civilians in internment camps. From Wikipedia:

>> Japan interned 130,000 Dutch, British, and American civilians in Asia during World War II.

Does this mean the Japanese were racist? No. This was world war, and countries were doing this as a source of leverage.

I don’t know about the rest of your examples, but I feel like you may be being a bit uncharitable in your characterization of these circumstances.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_internee

Yes, Japanese society was (and I believe remains) incredibly racist, at a level I think Americans would have some difficulty really comprehending.

The immigrants and US citizens of Japanese descent were not the ones doing the imprisoning of US soldiers, so this is entirely irrelevant? Japanese Americans were also much hated by white farmers in California for their efforts to engage in labor organizing across race lines. They created the first interracial farm-workers union with Mexican laborers:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-Mexican_Labor_Assoc...

I don't understand your question. It was suggested upthread that Japanese internment of Europeans during the war implied that racism didn't animate the policy, based on a premise that the Japanese aren't racist. But the Japanese were, at the time, luridly, profoundly racist; they were during the war racist in the mold of Nazi Germany.

FDR was very much a racist who was going along with a plot concocted by a wealthy group of agricultural interests to dispossess Japanese-American citizens and immigrants of their farmlands, under the pretense of national security:

> Only hours after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7. 1941, Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of California's powerful Salinas Valley Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, was dispatched to Washington to urge federal authorities to remove all individuals of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. In an interview for the May 1942 Saturday Evening Post, Anson told how he drew a frightful scenario for the War and Navy departments, the attorney general and every congressman he could get to listen to him: an invading army coming ashore in Monterey Bay and advancing into the Salinas Valley while Japanese residents blew up bridges, disrupting traffic and sabotaging local defenses.

> By the end of the war, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "farm ownership by Japanese amounted to about 30 percent of their total pre-war farm operations {and} ownership transfers to non-evacuees during and after evacuation has probably reduced these farm ownerships to less than a fourth of the total pre-war Japanese land holdings, including leaseholds . . . ." Few of the internees ever received full payment for their land.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/02/02/b...

This was further exposed in Korematsu vs. the US, where it was revealed that the Office of Naval Intelligence had prepared reports showing there was no actual threat, which they then hid from the courts when Japanese-American citizens sought redress through the justice system. Likewise, the FBI had already locked up or was monitoring anyone they thought was dangerous and had discredited all of the key justifications for internment:

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/confession-error-s... https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...

Thank you for this description and links. I had no idea the agricultural powers of California so explicitly advocated for removing the Japanese Americans.

> I’ve never heard of this, and the only sources I can find for the claim you made about mother Teresa make claims that the organization that mother Teresa started would refuse patients pain medication out of misguided notions. I’m curious what specifically you’re referring to here.

There's a fair bit of evidence that Mother Theresa had a religious appreciation for suffering that is presumably the basis for the 'sadist' assertion. That does seem like hyperbole but explaining the complicated ways that she or any of the referenced individuals far fall short of their reputations in an accurate and susinct way is hard.

Bill Cosby in the same breath as Einstein, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, FDR? Wow.

Einstein has been hugely whitewashed, like for example they claim he wasn't racist because of a black college visit he did where did PR speak, while ignoring the nazi like statements he did in China while talking better but also somewhat subtle racism about Japan.

> Gandhi was exceptionally vile in his beliefs.

A man who brought independence to 400 million people with non-violent means was a vile man? A man who’s the “father of the nation” to 1.3 billion people was a vile man?

Are you making up your own history here?

Gandhi also routinely slept in bed with naked young girls to prove he was celibate.

Also: "In 1903, when Gandhi was in South Africa, he wrote that white people there should be "the predominating race." He also said black people "are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.""

So maybe read up a little?

If we require that every historical person adhere to present sensibilities to be considered "great" then no-one will be considered "great". Societies routinely vacillate between permitting and punishing incest, rape, beatings, bigotry and theocracy, to name but a few things. It makes sense to me that we'd factor such matters out of our consideration - we cannot and should not hold an individual responsible for the mores of their time. Socrates was a misogynist and a pederast - but so was everyone else. Ben Franklin was an anti-semite - but so was everyone else. Einstein beat his wife - but so did everyone else. Lincoln was racist against blacks, even as he worked hard to give them rights - but this was far more progressive than most people of his era. We ought to grade people on a curve, not by modern standards. To do otherwise is a very foolish thing that puts us in the position eliminating any and all human virtue of the past. I can't help but guess that presentism was invented by a particularly ambitious PR intern.

> If we require that every historical person adhere to present sensibilities to be considered "great" then no-one will be considered "great"

So what? You say that like it is some huge loss! I think the correct choice is to abscond from this culture of hero worship you're advocating for and see people for their good and bad qualities, and be ready to criticize them without hesitation. Is it so important to you to put someone on a pedestal? I find that activity morally nauseating.

> we cannot and should not hold an individual responsible for the mores of their time

That's the weakest argument. "Of their time"? Last week? Last month? 1,000 years ago? You can pick whatever date you want to justify your hero worship. Personally I don't see accepting the Neuremberg defense as an ethical (or sophisticated) position, but you do you.

I personally think life is better when we admire people for doing amazing things. Such people are inspiring and are the characters in a pleasant and arguably constructive narrative. I don't advocate hero worship or putting people on pedestals. Nor do I advocate lying about their weaknesses or failings, even from a modern perspective. Two things can be true at once; vice and virtue can be present in the same person, and often are. We should accept that both vice and virtue are functions of time and place - a very modern notion. But the underlying "vibe" of your argument is that of a religious zealot convinced of the purity of your position, which I find natively abhorrent. It's the kind of position that I wouldn't even bother debating, like flat earth. I'd just walk away, as will will now do here.

So courageous of you, sir, to be catty and then run!

An argument on a public forum is not won by whoever shouts the loudest or has the most "courage". If expressed clearly enough, it suffices (and is much wiser) to explain your ideas once and let the readers decide.

So I guess I won. The person I was arguing with called me a religious flat earther and then announced he was done with the conversation, rather than allowing me to reply. Age old forum behavior: Gotta get the last word and run. Sad really. If I was such a savage troll then just don’t reply!!!

As a reader, I felt javajosh had the more persuasive argument.

Pointing out the flaws of these "great" individuals, heroes of humanity's past simply accomplishes nothing. They're long dead. They have notable accomplishments, that will be taught as history. Saying, "but he was a piece of shit according to my moral standard" doesn't really do anything except start a big argument. And that is a waste of time and energy, and a distraction from more important issues.

If your argument is "your shirt with a picture of Lincoln on it offends me - he was a racist!", then I guess you can just kick rocks or whatever.

P.S. "racist" is lately feeling really close to "communist" of the 50s as far as how effectual it is in describing a person's character. A witch hunt, in other words.

The claims against Mother Theresa spread particularly by Christopher Hitchens among others are false:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/gcxpr5/saint_mo...

Thank you for the link.

> Che was a sociopathic extreme homophobe and mass murderer

The homophobic claim is patently false. He had no involvement in Cuba's treatment of gay people, and the only quote in which he even mentions gay people is about how he was bothered when a guy he liked was beat up. The homophobia accusation is mostly just peddled as a gotcha question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5eFPgvhS60

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