I'll respond to this one, as it's at the top and it started off unpleasantly personal. Do try and avoid making assumptions about the person you're speaking to, please.
I live in a post-Soviet country taking an autocratic turn, I have friends fleeing. I will probably have to leave myself and it's making me miserable. I do not mean to diminish their experience or the experience of anyone suffering under an authoritarian government.
If you'll read the context of the post, I was talking about how Western (predominately US) media portrays other countries, which is frankly dehumanizing for the most part.
I grew up thinking that war starts, life stops; that a different form of government radically and instantly transmogrifies every aspect of a society. We are a peaceful, normal, democratic society and everywhere else is war or repression. A primitive dualism which has not stood up to my experience.
This is what's implied in the news and the movies, and forms a basis for the acceptance of the Western versions of the shared problems I discussed. It is often exaggerated in a way that lines places up for a bomb-driven democratization process.
It also means that, as GP noted, we don't feel the problems coming along when they do.
Do you get where I'm coming from?
I live in a post-Soviet country taking an autocratic turn, I have friends fleeing. I will probably have to leave myself and it's making me miserable. I do not mean to diminish their experience or the experience of anyone suffering under an authoritarian government.
If you'll read the context of the post, I was talking about how Western (predominately US) media portrays other countries, which is frankly dehumanizing for the most part.
I grew up thinking that war starts, life stops; that a different form of government radically and instantly transmogrifies every aspect of a society. We are a peaceful, normal, democratic society and everywhere else is war or repression. A primitive dualism which has not stood up to my experience.
This is what's implied in the news and the movies, and forms a basis for the acceptance of the Western versions of the shared problems I discussed. It is often exaggerated in a way that lines places up for a bomb-driven democratization process.
It also means that, as GP noted, we don't feel the problems coming along when they do.
Do you get where I'm coming from?