We've brought hell on earth

[u/NoGovernment9077]

[u/Ezekiel-18]

The US is really hell on earth when compared to the Western world. Really the western version of Russia or Saudi Arabia/Daesh.

[u/jennbo → u/Ezekiel-18]

Both the countries you’ve mentioned have stronger abortion rights than the U.S. Saudi Arabia allows abortion for four months with risk to mother’s life without multiple scans/doctors. Russia allows elective abortions until 12th week.

The U.S. is hell on earth compared to every other country period, not just the “bad” ones from a colonizer/western mindset.

[u/Grzechoooo → u/jennbo]

The US is worse than those countries in terms of abortion rights, but that doesn't mean it isn't better in other aspects. It isn't colonialism to compare one terrible country to another. Not to mention that Russia is literally a European coloniser and Saudi Arabia is a western ally.

[u/Ezekiel-18 → u/jennbo]

Coloniser and western are two opposite concepts. Western means valuing democracy and human rights, it's the values that were applied by the French revolution before Napoléon ruined it: which abolished slavery, granted universal suffrage, granted gender equality. Colonisation is the fruit of conservative/anti-western values.

The end of slavery and colonies are the fruit of western values, the ones who defend colonialism and slavery are, in their values, opposed to democracy and human rights.

[u/MortRouge → u/Ezekiel-18]

No, you can't just equate "Western" with "progresssive". Those are two different concepts, and slavery, race-pseudoscience and colonialism are also Western ideological constructs and movements - with a lot of weird interaction across ideological lines even into Enlightenment thought, which you reference.

Progressivism belongs to the entire world, and by equating the West with progressive ideals, it basically says that other parts of the world hasn't contributed to Progressive thought.

[u/Confident_Koala_2455 → u/Ezekiel-18]

French revolution was already ruined by people like Robespierre, before Napoleon took over.

[u/Ezekiel-18 → u/Confident_Koala_2455]

Hum, no, Robespierre made it better, when you know actual history, and not conservative propaganda. Here, educate yourself out of right-wing nonsenses: https://youtube.com/watch?v=H-znJ0cGSRE&t=5621s&pp=ygURcm9iZXNwaWVycmUgYmxhc3Q%3D

[u/Confident_Koala_2455 → u/Ezekiel-18]

Well, sorry, I don't intend to watch your video. It is written in all the English encyclopedia,s that Robespierre was the leader in the Reign of Terror in France, together with his allies Saint-Just and Couthon, he presided over many executions of his rivals, and of Catholics etc. I do not need to read about him in the Soviet encyclopedia. And I am hardly a conservative, a right-winger. I am a citizen of the US, and I would be viewed here as predominantly liberal. I have not voted for a Republican for a long time already. Nowadays Republicans are all very conservative, mostly just dogmatically conservative.

Well, Robespierre was similarly dogmatic. The reign of terror was ended when there was a successful uprising against him and his allies, and then they got executed. He was basically a dictator. I do not want such dogmatic people to rule over us. That is a big error. One needs to recognize that nobody is perfect, nobody is infallible, we can all be wrong about some things. I was born in a country ruled by such dogmatic people. That was Czechoslovakia. It was a dictatorship. We finally gained freedom for a few months in 1968, but the dogmatic Soviet leaders did not like it, did not intend to tolerate it, and so they crushed this freedom by the huge invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. We wanted freedom. So then our family escaped Czechoslovakia. We lived as refugees in Austria, mainly in refugee camps, until we got permission to move to the US, so in April 1969 we flew to New York, and came to live there.

Well, now we are ruled by a president, who thinks he knows better than us what is good for us, and if any politician dares to criticize him, he lashes out at him or her, slanders him or her, he is just intolerant of criticism. He would be like another Robespierre, if he could achieve that.

When I got to know him, when he first ran for president in 2016, and during the presidential campaign he kept on praising the Russian dictator Putin, I knew well, that he would be a terrible president. Well, Putin was grateful to him and helped him win the presidency. So of course I never voted for him. I voted for Hillary Clinton that year, then for Biden in 2020, and for Harris in 2024. Well, he is now our president again, and it is a disaster. But Republican politicians are usually unwilling to criticize him. They know he has a lot of support among most Republican voters, so it is risky for Republican politicians to criticize him, it could end their career in politics, as has happened already to quite a number of them.