Saudi Arabia and the "trillion dollar gambit"

[alfred russel]

Interesting thread idea...what utter hellhole would you choose to live in?

Pol Pot's Cambodia may be the worst for most of Languish. The USSR wouldn't be so bad if you avoided the Lenin/Stalin era. I tend to think Saudi Arabia isn't as bad as the press--my college roommate lived there for a while and said that while it sucks, it isn't nearly as bad as people imagine (he works for the state department).

[MadImmortalMan]

USA is least bad hellhole?

I mean yeah it sucks that I need to get permission for four different groups of bureaucrats before I can put a solar panel on my own roof, but at least they won't steal my house and send me off to work in a rice paddy because I'm too intellectual.

[alfred russel]

USA is least bad hellhole?

I mean yeah it sucks that I need to get permission for four different groups of bureaucrats before I can put a solar panel on my own roof, but at least they won't steal my house and send me off to work in a rice paddy because I'm too intellectual.

I was thinking in terms of Nazi Germany vs. Stalin's USSR vs. Pol Pot's Cambodia vs. N. Korea in the past 65 years vs. a coal mining town in England during the Thatcher regime.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[DGuller]

[mongers]

USA is least bad hellhole?

I mean yeah it sucks that I need to get permission for four different groups of bureaucrats before I can put a solar panel on my own roof, but at least they won't steal my house and send me off to work in a rice paddy because I'm too intellectual.

Come on man, you're making it too easy for us.   

[MadImmortalMan]

Fair enough. 

[DGuller]

  How insulting would it be to live under Khmer Rouge and do just fine?

[Razgovory]

How insulting would it be to live under Khmer Rouge and do just fine?

When the second American revolution purges the nation of intellectuals, it'll be interesting to see who's left and how they respond.

[dps]

USA is least bad hellhole?

I mean yeah it sucks that I need to get permission for four different groups of bureaucrats before I can put a solar panel on my own roof, but at least they won't steal my house and send me off to work in a rice paddy because I'm too intellectual.

Come on man, you're making it too easy for us.   

Keep in mind that the Khmer Rouge considered you an intellectual if you could read and write and too Westernized if you wore glasses.  Not a place any of us with bad eyesight would want to live.

Though I guess chucking your glasses in order to keep your head would at least mean you wouldn't have to see some of the fucked up shit that went on there.

[alfred russel]

Keep in mind that the Khmer Rouge considered you an intellectual if you could read and write and too Westernized if you wore glasses.  Not a place any of us with bad eyesight would want to live.

Though I guess chucking your glasses in order to keep your head would at least mean you wouldn't have to see some of the fucked up shit that went on there.

Thank hod I got lasik and no one would mistake me for an intellectual. I might have a chance to pull through.

[Martinus]

Saying "both were monsters" is unhelpful.  Idi Amin and the Boston strangler were monsters.  You chances of being killed by Albert DeSalvo and while in Boston is much lower then your chance of being killed by Idi Amin in Uganda. You are using broad terms to encompass things of different magnitude, different modus opperendi, different standards and different actions.

If you walked into ISIS territory, you'd almost certainly be kidnapped and immediately killed.  In Saudi Arabia you would not.  If you started committing blasphemy in Saudi Arabia they might punish you, but in all likely hood the Polish government could get you out of there.  In ISIS territory you would already have been kidnapped and killed.  If you started to have sex with men in Saudi Arabia the Saudi government probably wouldn't know, but if they found out you might be punished but once again your Polish citizenship may save you.  In ISIS territory you wouldn't have the chance due the immediate capture and execution.  Any requests from the Polish government would fall on deaf ears.

This line of reasoning is disgusting. It never even crossed my mind to consider both regime from my perspective of a white Westerner just visiting them. If you followed that logic, then North Korea is also a nice place.

[Razgovory]

Seems rather practical to me.  Since neither of us are citizens in either state which place would automatically kill you seems relevant.

[grumbler]

This line of reasoning is disgusting. It never even crossed my mind to consider both regime from my perspective of a white Westerner just visiting them. If you followed that logic, then North Korea is also a nice place.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Iran has killed plenty of people for totally non-violent political crimes. It's really weird to me Marti wants to say ISIS and Saudi Arabia are essentially the same (since to be frank his analogy of Hitler and Stalin compares two roughly equivalent monsters, albeit the former is more notorious, which isn't the same thing as more evil) but that Iran isn't as bad. He refuses to note the serious differences in life under ISIS vs Saudi Arabia as being worthy of viewing the two countries differently but he for some reason is more than willing to embrace Iran as much better despite being told it's not that different from Saudi Arabia.

It's almost like there's no logical consistency here at all, and he's entire opinion is based on the sort of simplistic images overlaid with text that have been shared in this thread to compare ISIS/SA.