What is the average standard of living in China 50 years ago vs today? There has been remarkable growth for millions of people. If your standard of living was 10x your parents, you might not view life as that bad?
I'm not impressed by ruthless politicians. Ruthlessness is good for action movie thrills. It takes much more skill and leadership to forge compromises and unite people using respect. By the way Spartans sucked even at combat, they just had really good PR. No matter how you slice it, they were completely average, even if you exclude naval battles or battles which included their allies.
(extremely long reads for those interested in history)
https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
re: whataboutism. Whataboutism has no place here because it's not even on the same order of magnitude. You're comparing tons to kilograms. We don't even know the full extent of what China is doing because free press is not allowed to operate there, doctors and journalists get sentences.
Yeah, yeah, "whataboutism". BTW, Chinese values, or Chinese government values? I'm sure the average Chinese would speak up if they knew they wouldn't end up in reeducation camp. Yeah I'll give you one thing, at least in the West it's still possible to speak up.
Meanwhile, in Washington DC at the moment, there are violence-ready Americans openly demanding democracy be ignored and to install their preferred fuckwit as ruler. Seems like they're just as brainwashed as a Chinese who's been fed CCP propaganda.