Status Quo

Recently, a half-Iranian content creator, who had been asked why she did not comment more on current political events in Iran explained that she tried to be cautious in order not to cause relatives (even though they all lived abroad) any problems. Sad, but not surprising as you never know what totalitarian regimes are capable of and expect the worst of them. Speaking of totalitarian states, I noticed that I have been self-censoring by not asking any of the questions I am itching to ask my foreign-born friends who live the US. They have all legally lived there for years, decades even, are married to US citizens and some of them are citizens themselves, they pay taxes and have contributed to society not just by producing more tax payers and yet...you just never know and I do not want to cause them any problems for voicing their honest opinion. This caution on my part might be completely exaggerated on my part and it might even be considered tasteless to mention this in the same context as Iran, but to me it has been a shocking realisation that there seems to be little difference between a well-known "villain-state" you expect nothing but the worst of and another that in the not-so-distant past was the symbol for freedom and democracy, but now seems to be just as predictably unpredictable...