QotD: Apologia

Turning contemporary problems of violence away from their political and economic entanglements and into problems of representation is not a new trick. Many governments, both historical and contemporary, in a rush to change the subject from such entanglements have played up to a romantic, glorious and often entirely fanciful past. One might just as well say the rape of Nanking should not be held against imperial Japan because, after all, the Japanese developed lovely tea ceremonies and landscape gardening hundreds of years before such unpleasant events.

Nick Packwood, "Starry wisdom", Ghost of a Flea, 2006-01-10