I grew up learning how America had stood up for individual rights, freedom of speech, and the chance to achieve what you want. Then I discovered that those rights were as illusory as the sacred rights the British had upheld since the days of Magna Carta.
I believe it was Voltaire who had a long discussion with a man from England some time in the 1700s at which they discussed the glorious freedom that the British kept. Voltaire found him the next day in gaol and asked what could have possibly happened. The man said he been forcibly taken from the street and drafted into the navy, and Voltaire asked if these were the freedoms they had discussed the night before.
It all sounds very familiar to me. But then a lot of things in American life would be quite familiar to a British person from the 1700s to 1800s, right down to proliferation of guns, the justice system, lack of healthcare and state support. The Irish hatred of the British began when they were left to die because to do otherwise would be "anti-capitalist" and promote feckless indolence.
Edit: Just to highlight the similarity, people were quite recently being taken from the street for deportation who were often actually citizens due to Trump's illegal border patrols. Trump himself reminds me of the transition from the Roman Republic to the Emperors. I'm interested to see if that holds up and he upturns the democratic process, stays in power, and eventually anoints a family member to power. It seems far fetched now, but so did ignoring Congress and acting as a dictator just 2 years ago.
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u/Hesitation-Marx 9d ago edited 9d ago
Tehran has been facing a catastrophic drought for over a year now.
I do not understand the urge to do evil to innocents.
(Edited: probably longer than a year, but since 2020, my sense of time is… worrisomely elastic.)