I think most people are aware that Churchill, as a person, was an asshole. His heroism is only in his leadership in wartime. That’s easy mode heroism. It’s why every unpopular leader wants a war. They get to send out other people to fight and take all the credit.

And Mao isn’t demonized because he mishandled a famine. It was the mass executions, my guy. The totalitarianism. The autocracy. That’s not to say that Mao was just an autocratic totalitarian whose policies resulted in mass executions. He was more than that. More complicated. But he was also… that.