re: #237 dragonath

Man, I’m having flashbacks now. In high school, there was a YR sort in my class who swore that, in Iraq, there was no such thing as “collateral damage”.

Besides giving intellectual cover to war criminals, no one could convince the guy that maybe some people weren’t the fuck involved.

It’s the massive grey area of the “collective guilt” of a group (such as citizens of a country) for having a despotic leader; e.g. “they deserve what they get for not rising up and throwing him out”.

A lot of people everywhere are simply trying to get by - keep a job, keep their family fed, try to get their children educated. They are not out to impress/oppress a viewpoint or religion or politics on their neighbors. Pretty much live and let live. And they do know enough that the rocking the boat and revolution/civil war is going to make getting the basics and protecting the family all the more difficult. So you can get a very understandable mindset of accepting the despot and trying to keep a low profile since the uncertainty of trying to force the change could well be worse.