Russia has resurrected Stalin…in marble, anyway. The Putin government is erecting a new Stalin statue in Moscow.

Meanwhile, a writer for the lefty alternative rag, The Seattle Weekly, is actually calling for the Lenin statue in the kitsch-loving Fremont neighborhood (a few miles from where I lived in Seattle) to be torn down:

[T]opple him in a large and public ceremony. Once that’s done, leave him there to become a kind of community canvas, so that anyone, as long as they observe certain conditions�nothing permanent, nothing damaging�can decorate the fallen dictator in any way they see fit. Let grade-school classes take turns decorating and desecrating him. Let graffiti artists tag him in easily washable paints. Conduct “Tie-Dye the Tyrant” contests. Once a year, in conjunction with Burning Man, set him on fire. The possibilities are endless.

In this way, instead of being a figure of violence, revolution, and tyranny, he’ll become a symbol, and a victim, of the eccentric expressive freedom that Fremont celebrates. And when the novelty fades and the traditions have fallen away and no one any longer cares what happens to him, truck him off to a museum, or sell him to some private collector. Or, better yet, dump him in the deepest pit you can find.

That, or sell it back to Moscow. Mass-murdering tyrants are coming back in vogue.

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