"Does my request that you stay focused on the topic of this thread strike you as being tyrannical?"
Counterfeit good manners are the opposite of good manners. If someone thinks that someone else is off-topic, an idea is to ask the one that is presumed to be off-topic for a clue, or two, as to what connections are possible between the suspected off-topic information and the topic. Tyrants have a routine that goes like this:
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Example 1a:
A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html "he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."
Those are not the words of the off-topic Pike. Those are the words of a Slave Owner with a documented 7 Statues. That is also one of the Slave Owners - unlike George Washington - who tended to treat slaves as employees, or as actual people, who freely wandered onto his land, or was at least invited in at a price, or a cost charged to the invitee. Those words are the words of a Slave Owner who had a documented history of working to free the slaves: do as I say, not as I do.
Example 1b:
Elliot’s Debates: Volume 1
Gradual Approaches Towards Independence
In the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. I. p. 10, the following proceedings, on the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, are disclosed:
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resources/ratification/elliot/vol1/approaches/"The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for, though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."
"We're all big boys and girls here,..."
My character assassin suggests that I am a child. Is that childish?
"The topic of this thread is in regard to some people wanting to tear down statues which reflect our actual history."
“I brought up the Pike statue piece because I wanted to add a twist to the theme of this thread.”
Another routine that can clue people in as to who is or who is not a tyrant is the routine where the tyrant strictly enforces the do as I say, not as a do rule. Call it setting the stage, or displaying behavior worthy of emulation: counterfeit.
“Wow. I must be going blind.”
That is why it may be a good idea to ask for clarification before going right into attack dog mode. The blind can finally see! Free at last!
I’m all for Statues of famous criminals like Jefferson, or Pike, or George the Third, or even psychopaths like George Washington, or Charles Manson, in Public Places, so long as I am not enslaved so as to pay for them. Those who wander into Public Places, such as Public Forums, can be exposed to all those dynamic actions that routinely occur in Public Places, anyone can wander in unattended, to view Statutes, or learn the history of the people represented by the Statutes, or do the pigeon thing on the Statute, you know: defecation, not deification.
Here in the Mojave Desert, for example, the whole State of New Jersey could be hidden away where no one would ever wander into it. No one has claimed vast portions of this Public Place called the Mojave Desert as their exclusive domain in which anyone happening to wander into it - or invited into it - will have their character ruthlessly attacked by the owner, for the crime of speaking the truth. It just doesn't happen, and a wanderer could wander for years without ever being accosted by some pretentious owner. Yet, someone claiming to own it could conceivably erect a thousand Statutes, and the only ones defecating on them would be what: lizards?
“Yes indeed, and there are reasons why no statues of Donald Trump have been erected on the Moon.”
That political hit is called hyperbole, and it is inserted in place as part of a Man-of-Straw attack on my character; which is done to avoid the actual information offered on this very topic. The only one mentioning Donald Trump is the political hit-man, the pretentious owner of the Public Place, yet the inference is that I am the dummy who goes off-topic with absurd claims that suggest putting Statues on the Moon. That Man-of-Straw, that is supposed to have my name, is an easy imbecile to tear apart with words, once that Man-of-Straw - with my name on it - is constructed out of straw-like thin air; like the purchasing power earned at the “Federal Reserve.” Talk about tyrants!
But that is enough of the off-topic truth-telling, accurately accounting for the aggressor, and his intended target.
A possible on-topic question to ask, and have answered, is: who cares about Statues in Public Places? I don’t, and I certainly would not spend my limited resources on building them up or tearing them down, while statutes, on the other hand, could be useful suggestions offered by reasonable people to other reasonable people, so long as that which is suggested for the goose is also good for the gander. If the goose claims ownership of public places, by hook or by crook, then anything goes as often is demonstrated in fact.
How about a Statue of Barry Soetoro, or the famous one who said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0I trust that I will be clued in.