There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a very oblivious normal life without knowing all the darks secrets of a system.
And yet, of course, the upper echelons lived very well. They had palaces, anything they wanted was imported for them from the West, even if not allowed for the average citizen. Certainly, they didn't complain about their villages being gassed, or their sons being tortured to death by the sociopath son of the dictator.
But saying "there's no singular canonical experience" feels very strange in that regard, because there was, but with a few exceptions.
That does not mean Saddam wasn't a psychopath and a brutal oppressor. The fact he did those things are enough to condemn him as the evil dictator he was. There's no need to erase other experiences.
When talking about how "people in a country" live, you look at the average person. You don't say "but the King and his ministers live differently, we shouldn't erase their experiences". The inner circle always lives differently from the masses, but by definition, they are very few. Look at the lives of the many, not the few.
And regarding Iraq: during Saddam's reign about a quarter of a million people were murdered or disappeared. There's a good chance that the majority of Iraqis did have someone in their family affected, though it might not have been their son, but a cousin or nephew.
This need to see suffering as universal to be valid is problematic, because very few atrocities affect a large portion of a population. That most don't does not jvalidate them.
Another ~100k Kurds and Shiite Arabs were killed during the '91 uprisings. Together, they make up more than half of the population.
Unless Saddam was super surgical (#heWasnt), they were affected. Unless of course, by "personally affected", you mean they personally did die. But that would be a very strange idea.
In any case you're the one mong goalposts here - this started with simply making the point that it's unread jable to assume a single experience captures the experience of a people.
Nevertheless you've provided nothing to justify the idea that Saddam's purges affected anywhere close to a majority of the population, even if that is itself a distraction.
However, most Americans don't need to fear for their lives by the police, and most Iraqis aren't Kurds. Most Iraqis weren't gassed or tortured either.
You can't twist the narrative to pretend that the situation of the abused minorities are what the majority of the population experienced. Yes, they were living under their dictator's regime and no they were probably none too happy about the atrocities occurring, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a normal life outside that.
In the US police kill less than 1,000 per year. Most are white people, many justifiably. So let’s overestimate and say 25% of those are murder. (Clearly not, but work with me). So 250 per year in a country of 350M.
When the Kurds were gassed, a singular event, 3,000-5,000 people were killed. Random people, shelled by the Iraqi military for no reason other than living in the same place as rebellious Kurds. Iraq had a population of 16M at the time.
Those are clearly two VERY different situation you’re trying to draw a parallel between.
I do agree that these events don’t define the life of the general population.
Because it doesn't feed the research machine!
One anecdote is dismissed. Ten anecdotes are collected to start grifting for grants. And one hundred anecdotes gives you Empiricism (TM)!
I've come to value anecdotes as a marker of "something is there." To throw them away completely is foolish. Have you read most research papers being pumped out? The methodologies are always flawed (dare I say, biased; ha!) towards favorable results (or atleast I hope. Some of the methodologies I've seen for biological research are so stupid, I refuse to believe someone came up with them in good faith).
One anecdote should point us in a direction but it's not enough to prove anything.
AKA "there is a grain of joke in every joke".
Not everything is bigger in Texas but this is a clear marker on some aspects of Texans self-perception. Which was exported so successfully it's now known not only in all other states but in other states too.
You just read a blog post of a personal anecdote. What were you expecting? A dissertation?