Attorney General Dana Nessel's office is ending its pursuit of criminal prosecutions over the Flint water crisis after seven years of no convictions, a decision that came Tuesday after the Michigan Supreme Court rejected an attempt to revive charges against Republican former Gov. Rick Snyder.

If Flint had been a village in China, the offending officials would have gotten the death sentence years ago.

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[–] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

but bringing it back to a more general aspect: how a dictatorship treats its people really depends on the situation and where the "power" is coming from.

Is this any different than a liberal democracy? The US is a genocidal slave state which murdered and enslaved Native Americans and Black people. The old European empires like Britain, France, the Netherlands, etc did the same even when they were ostensibly democratic. The "Middle East's only democracy" is carrying out apartheid and genocide as we speak, and the original South African apartheid state was a democracy too. Let's also not forget that the Nazis rose to power directly from the legitimate democratic mechanisms of the Weimar Republic.

Looking at all these examples, it's pretty clear that democracies are perfectly happy to murder and enslave if the victims can't strike back at the democratic country's power structure.

[–] fer0n@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Good point. It’s interesting how, in a democracy, what the majority wants can (by definition?) go against what minorities want and in some instances even against their human rights. Some of the laws, which haven‘t always come to pass in a democratic way, are (hopefully) shielding everyone equally from harm. Certainly not a perfect system and it definitely fails people all the time.