@BowsacNoodle @threalist no harm's been done to his legacy. The people complaining about him don't even know about it, and don't even really care about him in particular.

The real shame is well in the past: the people he left behind, his progeny, were gradually eliminated from a city that honored him, or poisoned against themselves. That damage got worse over a long period of time, and the statue certainly wasn't any kind of ward against it. The statue was the last to fall, the people who pointlessly did that even failed in this last way and made him a symbol and drew people's attenton to his legacy that nobody was really talking about.

Suppose that the state remained, but the city had been overtly taken by a foreign military and you were at war with them. The city's been purged of civilians like like fortress-ciites in Ukraine, like Bakhmut, and there are only enemies in it anymore. Do you *want* to blow up the statue? Of course not. If you can save it, great. But you would also not go out of your way to save it when the people are what's important and the people are gone. If you take the city back, and the people return, then they can make a new statue.