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Comment by imjustsaying | Hacker News Reader

Hungarian here.

Goodbye civilization? Most people can't read? It's done?

No my friend, isolation seems to be getting to your head. "When I look out the window, only 10-15% are wearing masks". That's far more than many other places.

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That top level comment is such a typical somewhat smart central European youngster (now maybe in their 30s, like me) that was heavily brainwashed the whole childhood how UE is soooo much superior and civilized, and the their own culture and people are so inferior because of backwards religion and backwards conservatism. For them, the unelected officials ruling UE is a pinacle of democracy, while lawfully elected politicians at home are dictators, and so on.

I was raised in the same environment in Poland, was a subject of the same UE-love brainwashing most of my youth, and have/had plenty of friends with the same view.

I am from Germany. Same here

Same what? How are local German culture and EU culture in opposition?

He's not making any argument about culture. Not even sure what EU culture would be - it's a bureaucracy?

Well, for someone who left country between yours and OPs (Slovakia), which is in much better shape than Hungary now, and probably +-same as Poland (no hard numbers now), its kind of true. Mind you, EU is no saint but our countries benefit from it massively, and the drawbacks are comparably tiny.

There are nice, good and working things back home. But they are hugely overshadowed by amount of things that don't work as they should - social system, healthcare, high criminality, utter pervasive corruption on all levels. We also have huge issues with big roma population that all politicians gave up on long time ago. Nobody cares about them anymore, I'd say they are a ticking bomb.

On top of all that, many folks are xenophobic, if not outright racist. You can have wonderful deep kind relationship or encounters with strangers, but people can be proper selfish assholes on a level I haven't seen in the west. Politicians, always the worst scum of the given population, are a bad, corrupt joke through whole spectrum.

I could go on for hours. Why... I moved, just like millions others and didn't look back (not EU). Its nice to visit, but that's about it. I can see on most folks back home how not-really-happy they are, kinda OK is the norm.

Lawfully elected politians can become dictators and so on.

Your comment has no content.

Anybody "could". So?

Fair enough, somebody:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Party_(Hungary)

I am Spanish and I see exactly the same thing here. How it's okay for Germany to rule over us because locals are so convinced our own country and its citizens are inferior. It's so sad, especially since it ends as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These sorts of claims are standard fare for divisive far right parties. Apparently they work quite well given their political rise and the prevalence of that sort of rhetoric even in forums like this.

Funny how the left-wing Yanis Varoufakis probably agrees with that statement. But yeah, why don't you far right anyone who disagrees with the mainstream.

Why is it ok for people in North Dakota to have a say over me in Washington? Or for that matter why is it ok for people in Shoreline 5 km away to have a say over me in Seattle?

Because that's how we've agreed to organize. Economies of scale. The difference between Spaniards and Germans is smaller than you might expect.

>The difference between Spaniards and Germans is smaller than you might expect.

Isn't that the point? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

Here in the center of my city in Germany, it's only like 2% wearing masks, and that's only because we have about 2% East Asians here.

German here. When I look out of my window i see exactly 0% are wearing a mask. Saw one person in the supermarket the other day.

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