Yesterday, 11:51 AM
https://x.com/tomselliott/status/1835366493711692099
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{Tom Elliott @tomselliott | 15 September 2024}
I’ve grown up practically worshipping Churchill. To me he was always history’s personification of a total badass with unshakable resolve. It also helped that he was hilarious (often spontaneously), wrote some of the finest English I’ve had the pleasure of reading, had charisma capable of rallying a beleaguered nation, and somehow did it all while basically being a functioning alcoholic. His autobiography “My Early Life, Thoughts & Adventures,” is one of my favorite books; by the time he was 27 he had already lived what would be a dozen lives for normal people (did you know he was taken as a PoW during the Second Boer War but managed to escape thanks to some miraculous good luck … imagine how differently history might have evolved had he had his luck gone the opposite way).
Embracing my habit of pursuing the most unpopular opinion possible on every possible topic, mark me down for believing Churchill’s due a reconsideration. Over the years I’ve learned more about him that I like much less. Specifically how he had the ability to help resolve a British empire-induced famine in India but chose not to, unapologetically used mass starvation as a weapon against German citizens, supported the use of chemical weapons, and was pretty clearly involved in the sinking of the Lusitania. He certainly wasn’t above facilitating the deaths of UK-aligned noncombatants if their deaths could be effectively exploited in a much larger conflict.
And I don’t think this is the kind of “presentism” analysis progressives are so often using against slave-owning Founding Fathers. Because at the time Churchill wasn’t in the mainstream on any of these issues — he was always pulling Overton’s Window toward more death.
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