Yeah, this is it. I've lived under governments of a variety of different stripes in some very different parts of the world, I've lived in war zones. Day to day life has been more or less the same across all of them.
You go shopping, go to work, see friends, have a few beers or maybe a smoke, eat out, go to weddings, birthdays and funerals, play sports. People run businesses, post memes.
The way non-OECD, "non-democratic" countries are portrayed in the West gives us a very false sense of superiority.
We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption.
I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum. There's just more similarities between countries than differences, in my experience. The things that often distinguish are more cultural and geographical than political.
You go shopping, go to work, see friends, have a few beers or maybe a smoke, eat out, go to weddings, birthdays and funerals, play sports. People run businesses, post memes.
The way non-OECD, "non-democratic" countries are portrayed in the West gives us a very false sense of superiority.
We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption.
I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum. There's just more similarities between countries than differences, in my experience. The things that often distinguish are more cultural and geographical than political.