Why should we not erect statues of living people?

      Well, in recent years, toppling of statues have been very much at rage -after all, why not judge historical people based on contemporary standards? It makes perfect sense, so off with those long-dead evil white men!

Also, why not erect statues of living people just to show how virtuous we are? For example, Greta Thunberg?

Let's forget about Greta herself - it is not about her per se. But can anyone spot what the problem is with this?

Well, I will help. First, it is very strange that living people get statues. That is just... wrong.

Second, and this is more important: how do you know she will not say or do something tomorrow, next year, two decades from now for which you will want to cancel her immediately? Then what? Are you going to remove her statue immediately? Are statues now just temporary political statements? In this case paper mache would be a better medium.

Hm? Nobody thought about this? Are everyone so involved with identity politics that they can only think of the present? Some sort of goldfish-mentality this is as Yoda would say)

(Bonus questions... Shall we periodically topple statues of everyone because they failed -or will fail- to live up to our future's standards?)

The racist fish

So apparently even the statue of a fish with boobs is racist.
This perfectly fits into the present trend of vandalizing statues of people of old for being something they were not - like our friend, poor Cervantes. And even when the ire of the activists turns on a genuine racist -like Churchill- we still are faced with the fact that they absolutely have no clue who this bird really was, and why he was a racist. (Let's just ignore the fact he did not get a statute for being a racist.)

So we have a wave of statute-toppling by activists who are absurdly ignorant on what they are actually doing in the name of fighting colonization and racism. Poor fish-girl is the low point of this activism, I think - you can't get lower than that I think.
Let's ignore the whole complex issue of colonialism, slavery and whatnot - after all, nuances are not something we like. We want black and white, binary answers.

But this leads to a real slippery slope. Us judging everyone by today's standards means we will have to remove statues and the works of every single person until the last decade or so from public spaces and the public domain. Not to mention twenty years from now everything that survived the purge will be destroyed since it is safe to bet that tomorrow's standards will be different from today's.