Anyone who lives a comfortable life directly profits off of the exploitation and suffering of others. Same thing for Europeans and their imperialism of Africa and Asia.
How are people okay with it.
In a similar vein, I feel crazy when I think that Americans genocided a huge indigenous population and stole a continent’s worth of land… and no one cares or really thinks we did a bad thing! I mean, I guess we really don’t reflect on what we did because that would require us admitting we did a really bad thing and the people who founded this country were bad. It would also require us to admit all this doesn’t really belong to us. But even slavery, Americans can at least very superficially admit it was bad. No one ever talks about the genocide of native Americans and the theft of their land.
I brought this point up to a friend of mine and he said “We made their lives better, unfortunately at the cost of lives.” I absolutely cannot understand how he thinks lives were made better.
