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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

For people despising the Muslim world, those people are working hard to reproduce their fate: going from the most enlightened place on earth to religious obscurantism.

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I don't know why people keep painting this conjuncture as some sort of aberration in American history. Intolerance and domination of religion and conservative ideological positions over the state and public sphere is actually the norm, not the exception, if you look back on the 20th century history. From the 60s through the 90s is the exception, really.

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case

One of my earliest memories was staying up late on a Sunday night to see Neil and Buzz on the moon. Now, in the same country that could once put them there, I have to defend that it even happened. Basic health measures like pasteurization and vaccination are under direct attack. It's been a long shitty decline into madness, and it's just accelerating.

You and I both grew up during times when it was acceptable to persecute homosexuals, hit your kids in public and private, and it was "controversial" for women to take jobs other than bank tellers or airline stewardesses.

And we filled our gas tanks with leaded gas and people smoked in windowless restaurants.

While I'm not happy how the world is going right now, it's also important to take stock of where we've been.

Another way to say that would be: the USA is finally doing to itself what it did to Iran. Toppling a liberal democracy in favor of an authoritarian cult of personality with the support of a fanatic religious sect.

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