This is literally my parents. They told me to stop criticizing the people in power, even going as far as saying I shouldn’t criticize the government of my former country. I don’t even have citizenship in my former country anymore, not sure how I could even get in trouble for criticizing is effecively a foreign country to me. (I’m talking about PRC btw).
My mom told me to “just focus on improving your own life and stop worrying about things like you can’t control like politics” (as in, both the politics of my former country and the politics of my current country)
Am I in the wrong here? Should I just keep quiet and not say anything so that I don’t “get in trouble”?
That is a fair assessment, and in a world where life is expected to be stable and tolerable, it is stongly tempting to keep your head down.
China may be that kind of stable, though from what I hear, they disappear people for benign offenses, and people have to manage their social rating. Not easy to do when you’re, say, gay, or neurodivergent, or Uyghur. I can’t help but wonder if the acceptable norm is shrinking, and the list of undesirables is growing.
Here in the states, it already is growing. And unless you’re doing sexual favors for a billionaire or are indispensable to a billionaire, you’re on the purge list, just further down than homeless folk and Latins.
Granted you might rather just be summarily executed than tortured. I personally am terrified by the marks on the interior walls of the Auschwitz death camp genocide chambers where the victims were clawing as they died. In the current path of least resistance, I’ll be making those marks one day, or rather will perish from malnutrition in CECOT.
If I have to go out suffering, I’d rather I made a difference. If I lie low, I might as well commit suicide, which I’ve actually considered except that would cause harm to others connected to me.
It’ll also suck for them when ICE comes for me and my neighbors are silent.