I think what we should never forget is that life is good for many people in a dictatorship or it wouldn’t work at all. As long as you’re not targeted by the government and keep your mouth shut, you get to enjoy the fruits of oppression. It’s easy to settle into a dictatorship. Of course, murder, torture and corruption also happens. But unfairness, cruelty, poverty, corruption, violence, these things can and do also happen in non-dictatorships. 😦
That’s my take away from talking to people who lived in dictatorships. They’ll tell me that back then, they could walk to the community swimming pool in the dark without fear, for example. Or that perhaps some students disappeared but one just doesn’t think to hard about these things. And during the one military coup I witnessed, we listened to the radio for a bit, and then we went to school and off to work and that’s it. So easy. So creepy.
Got some replies on Mastodon, too.
Gergely Nagy wrote about his experience growing up in Hungary:
“Keep your head down, mind your own business; go on, nothing to see here” was the norm.
notklaatu wrote about friends saying the same thing:
They’re nice people, but it’s strange to hear friends praise a regime under which I myself probably would have been imprisoned or living in fear.
#Politics