Among the joys of half term week was a trip to the Cheddar Gorge. For someone whose maternal family comes from Dorset and who lives in Bristol with relatives across Somerset this may sound odd but in 46 years on this planet this was my first visit. I now have a ten year pass and so will be back to look inside a few more caves. And then there is the small museum.
It has some interesting displays on the history of Cheddar on cannibalism and on sex 5000 years ago. But it also manages to pack in what it terms a “modern perspective”, what the Daily Mail termed “political correctness gone mad” and what I would call just plain lies.
What enraged the Mail was that the Museum has replaced the terms AD and BC with BP (Before Present). Thus 0 AD is 2014 BP, 1066 is er….oh shite I can’t do the maths in my head BP You get the drift.
The Mail ranted on in a predictable fashion about how the Museum was abandoning Christ and offending good Christian folks. My objection is that the system – as demonstrated above – is clumsy and also silly. 1979 AD (the year that our Saviour, the blessed Thatcher came to power and thus Year 0 in a new system I propose) is right now 35 BP. But in January 2015 it becomes 36 BP. This is just silliness in a way that only politically correct lefties can regard as sensible.
But the Museum offended in a far worse way as it tried to explore the idea of man’s willingness to destroy his fellow man with these words on a poster “9/11 Religious zealots from poor Muslim countries destroy the Twin Towers, symbols of Western Consumerism.” Well that is a series of lies is it not? Yes it is.
The 9/11 bombers came from Egypt (a moderately poor country) but also Saudi Arabia, patently a very rich one.
The 9/11 bombers were also universally middle and upper class so they themselves were not in any way poor – economic envy is not an excuse that washers here.
The Twin Towers were perhaps symbols of capitalism bit not of consumerism. More importantly 4000 folks were inside and were killed – that should be mentioned perhaps?
And finally these were not Religious zealots from Muslim Countries as that implies they might be Christians or Jews or Hindus. Let’s be explicit they were Islamic zealots.
The truth is that on 9/11 Islamic zealots driven by nothing other than a warped view of their own religion butchered 4,000 innocent people occupying iconic buildings in the USA”
To pretend that these folks were religious zealots from Muslim countries rather than just common or garden Islamofascists is a pretence. To imply that the attacks were driven by poverty is a lie. To suggest that economic envy drive the attacks is just plain untrue.
No doubt the Museum will argue that it does not wish to offend visitors who may be Moslems or perhaps visiting tourists from Iran, members of the Tehran Cheese appreciation club. Well tough. The truth hurts and with matters like the 9/11 attacks or the holocaust you need to constantly remind folks of what the truth is in order to prevent atrocity deniers from rewriting history. The holocaust was organised and largely committed by Germans, not by folks most of whom lived in German speaking areas. Its aim was to butcher every Jew in Europe, not to allow extensive urban planning in areas formerly known as the “ghettos”.
Surely the prime purpose of museums is to reveal truths. The Cheddar Museum of Prehistory fails.