Thread by @thomaschattwill

We have spent the past few years debating how oppressive the U.S. is. These images of Afghans clinging to a U.S. plane and falling from the sky are a damn sobering reminder that while there are no utopias, we'd better appreciate the society we were lucky enough to be born into.

I'll expand this beyond the U.S. I have had conversations with well-to-do Parisians this past year who have said with a straight face that President Macron is "authoritarian," "a tyrant." Let's get some perspective.

If you're lucky enough to be born into a prosperous democracy that isn't dependent on the whims of a foreign presence to keep the forces of chaos and murder at bay, you ought to be critical when necessary but also deeply grateful for the present without being stuck in the past.

Here's a prime example of the devastating lack of perspective that now obtains:

https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1426619110742532101?s=20