In Chinese, there is a saying: “talking without your back hurting.” It sounds cooler in Chinese, idioms don’t translate well, but it basically means that you talk big, but have never actually gone through the hardship of which you’re critizing (back pain generally refers to labour in Chinese idioms). For example, criticising farming techniques when you’ve never done any farming, or, saying all high and mighty that people should give to the poor when you yourself have never donated anything.
That’s a good way to put it, and I think this sums up a lot of the western rhetoric. Since there hasn’t been much internal conflict up to now, the west kept gloating about its freedoms. Now that people are trying to exercise the freedoms they were told they have, western governments are cracking down in a much harsher way than the governments they like to refer to as authoritarian.
In Chinese, there is a saying: “talking without your back hurting.” It sounds cooler in Chinese, idioms don’t translate well, but it basically means that you talk big, but have never actually gone through the hardship of which you’re critizing (back pain generally refers to labour in Chinese idioms). For example, criticising farming techniques when you’ve never done any farming, or, saying all high and mighty that people should give to the poor when you yourself have never donated anything.
That’s a good way to put it, and I think this sums up a lot of the western rhetoric. Since there hasn’t been much internal conflict up to now, the west kept gloating about its freedoms. Now that people are trying to exercise the freedoms they were told they have, western governments are cracking down in a much harsher way than the governments they like to refer to as authoritarian.
I hate it when Westerners see government overreach/corruption in their own (capitalist) countries and go “It’s like Soviet Russia/North Korea/China!”
Yeah, there’s a lot of projection happening in the west. Like when they see empty store shelves thanks to failing capitalism and moan about communism.