It seems to me that it is generally unwise to idolize anyone. Unfortunately, it happens way more often than not. And because of it, people end up overlooking, accepting and justifying immoral behavior by a few talented people which inspires the next generation to repeat. What would the world look like today if we held those who are idolized accountable in the same way as those who are not idolized?

Any one heard of this book? Sounds like something simular to what you are saying. I've never read it.

Title To the Victor Go the Myths and Monuments: The History of the First 100 Years of the War Against God and the Constitution, 1776 ? 1876, and Its Modern Impact
Author Arthur R. Thompson
Edition illustrated
Publisher American Opinion Foundation, Incorporated, 2016
ISBN 1936698013, 9781936698011
Length 544 pages

Agree fully. We celebrate cutthroats. If he killed more of "them" he was a hero. T rex would eat you when hungry but he would not make a bomb and throw it on another continent to kill there.
I point to Monsanto how greed and corruption kills with impunity. Defoliant prayed on forests caused near extinction of leaf eating monkeys we talk about saving and protecting. 70% of insects are poisoned out. Human species will be next and let's hope that it will happen before we are smart enough to shit up another planet.

NIXON WAS INNOCENT!!
Well, maybe not but I remember the great writer Alister Cooke explaining that to the historian it is not what actually happened that is important but what is believed to have happened at the time. This was in the context of the Boston tea party. It matters little that it may well have been just a drunken mob and the British soldiers were merely defending themselves. It was the spin of the event that helped fire up the revolution.
Hypothetically, if subsequent papers were to reveal that Nixon was the victim of an elitist plot, it would matter naught. The taint on the republican party that led to the election of Jimmy Carter would still be the historical significance of the event and the use of "gate" to describe political scandals.

It’s pretty much standard in all countries. History is twisted to the benefit of the country teaching it. Why does the South honor men who were responsible for the deaths of thousands of men on both sides to support the slave economy? Japan and South Korea are fighting over Korean teaching that WWII Japanese used Korean women as troop prostitutes. Atrocities against Native Americans are pretty well never taught in K-12. This is the way of the world: countries want to promote their own glory, toot their own horn, no matter how many horrible things it took to get there.

the truth is seldom set free. and if it is it's only noticed by a small % of ppl.

This one of the more interesting conversations I've seen on this site in quite awhile. The problem with heros are that the things that make them heros is that they are not afraid to make decisive moves.

"Decisive", not necessarily moral., ethical, or just, just decisive at the critical time. One characteristic of heros is their ruthlessness in the face of adversity. There ruthlessness against adversaries, real or imagined, against external threats or internal, foreign or economic.

When they succeed, humans have short memories and prefer happy endings. When they fail, they are vilified and their failure is held against them. But dispite their failure they were acting the same as those that succeeded. The thing that makes heros heros is the ability and willingness to do what needs to be done at the time that it needs doing, regardless of the outcome or impact of their actions. All heros are fallable, blind to opposing opinions, and capable of the greatest of action, and the worst of crimes.

Most idols have feet of clay. The public persona is rarely reality. As much as I admired JFK and intellect, he was a S.O.B. who took advantage of and used women. Jimmy Carter gave a Central American right-wing dictator, who was abusing his people, millions of dollars to suppress them under the guise of fighting communism. Eisenhower forced out a democratically elected president of Guatemala and replaced him with a right-wing military dictatorship. So, it would seem the more one knows about our heros, the less they seem to deserve that status.

Tesla has always been one of my favorites and I have read and watch many things about him!

We make heroes out of high achievers and gods out of heroes. Then we are suddenly surprised when they turn out to have feet of clay. The phrase "He was no saint" is oft-quoted. If you read about the lives of saints you will find that they were not too nice either. For all their faults they leave there mark on history. You have a constitution however much flawed because of Jefferson.
Does it really matter if Martin Luther King's wife used to "fall down" a lot?
Our own British hero Churchill has his statue in the houses of parliament. Only one of of 3 commoners ever to have received a full state funeral. Yet many on the left would vilify him. He was a racist political dinosaur. If he had had his way it would have been the British that would have 1st dropped chemical weapons on the Kurds in Iraq. Yet his oratory and strength of purpose were exactly what my country required at its moment of need. On balance, the world was much better off for having him around. That's about the best you can say of anyone

While I agree in general, I do not agree with some examples you have provided. Tesla is by no means a footnote. He was popular during his times and remains so. His fault was probably in the business end of his inventions. Edison certainly doesn't deserve being called a theif. He was an inspirational inventor with a keen business sense. He is a complicated person, but his contribution to technology is beyond doubt.

Unfortunately, that's reality, winners shape history, losers don't. But not all are losers or winners, sometimes you have to look at what was the output, some people are willing to forget the bad because him or her did mostly good overall, that's probably why Edison vs Tesla or Burr vs Madison and Jefferson may not be that clear cut, we're all human beings, nobody is perfect, yet some examples used here by some are so outlandish, like the Hitler crap because he transformed Germany doesn't mean we should forget his heinous crimes or Mussolini, most people fortunately are not THAT stupid.

Depends who's writing the history !

The information is there. You just have to dive into it. Which means read, read, read!

That Dude named Adolf Hitler took the Young, Defeated Country of Germany, the Scapegoat of WWI and turned it into a Military Juggernaut in less than a Decade. He had a Social Program were you give 6 months of your Youth to the Mother Land and in exchange you were treated to all kinds of Positive Perks during those 6 months... Please do Not Accuse me of Pro Nazi... I am just noticing History. Even "Bad Guys" loved Someone Real Good!!! There was that American pro football hero named OJ Simpson. That baseball hero nicknamed "Charlie Hustle" Pete Rose... I can continue... just right now we are hearing of the "annoying" antonio brown accused of Rape. It will never end!!!

While you are viewing this from a national.com/ international point of view , things also work this way on the very personnel level . How many out there , have dated / married someone with a horrible story about their ex . , only to learn later that the half of the story you'd been given either left out some vital information , or was just a pile of lies from beginning to end ?

To the victor goes the spoils. To curry favor with who ever is in power is the bottom line. We see it play out every figging day with trump!
If you have a parent that questions what you are learning in school it really helps. My Dad told me about Tesla and his contribution to so much we take for granted today. Yeah, Edison my ass!
The down side was I loathed school mostly because I did not trust what I was being told and in the 60's google was not yet available.

I have been reading Howard Zinn's, "A People's HIstory of the United States," and it has opened my eyes. Many of our most celebrated heroes were not very nice people and did some very nasty things to others. It amazes me, the difference between the history we learned in school and how it actually happened. For instance, I never knew that thousands of our citizens died during the early 1800's when they went on strike to complain of pay so low it did not buy them enough to eat or that Andrew Jackson was such an ass, and a dangerous one at that. I highly recommend this book to any one who is brave enough to learn our true history.

"To the victor goes the spoils" "King of the Hill" "Survival of the Fittest" These are terms that denote life in society today. Elections, sports and a list of so many other things that are a part of our daily existence. Where would we be without them? I often wonder how much chaos would ensue if the truth could be known?

The victor writes the history... None of us are truly totally good or evil as what is good or evil is subjective.
Right now in the UK there is a drive to drag Churchill down as a criminal against humanity as evil as Hitler. But without his input at a crucial time, those people who complain about him are likely to have never been born without him.
In the end, everything has a cost, and for heroes that is often their reputation.

I find it a scary thing to think of how history is taught in schools. And yes, the winner always writes the history and that is why it is so flawed. Children in US schools aren't really taught much about how we took land away from the Natives. Basically what is taught is THanksgiving and everyone being nicey nicey and them boom - Natives start attacking settlers. As far as slavery what is taught is that we had slavery, we had the Civil War, We had reconstruction and everything was then just peachy keen. Very little is said about Jim Crow and then nothing about how discrimination keeps happening. Also womens rights...... I could go on and on and I truly feel that is why we have the mess in our country - kids are taught fairy tales.

Edison is the first one to come to mind when I read the first sentence.

We are all raised with this idea that there are "good" and "bad" people, that the dichotomy is black and white, you can only fall into one category or the other. The truth is that no such dichotomy exists, we only pretend it does because it's metaphysically beneficial for society to do so.

I would challenge your assumption that heroes and villains exist at all, because what we believe someone to be is relative to what we want for ourselves.

One of my favorite books is Lies My Teacher Told Me, written by a History professor. In the beginning of the book, he decried having to deprogram students and started them out with an writing assignment to describe their favorite historical figure, and then, in many cases, he would point out reasons why they might wish to reconsider. At the end of the book, he blamed the publishing industry for how it chose to release textbooks. If, for an example, you wrote a history book that was factually accurate, at the expense of so many innaccurate texts in circulation, you'd face an uphill battle in getting it published, out of supposed concern for disrupting standards. Yeah, it's a known problem with no solution on the horizon.

As a professional historian, I can say that there is truth in what you write, but scholarship continues to evolve. One of the problems is how to communicate the scholarship to broader audiences. Subaltern studies, gender studies, revisionist work is available but is frequently not read beyond specialists.