r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 12h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

3.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

283

u/Equal-Hair3068 11h ago

She was the face of peaceful resistance for decades and then completely flipped when she got actual power. The Rohingya situation sealed it for me, seeing her just deny everything in court was chilling

56

u/DecentFormat 11h ago

True, but she is still definitely the lesser evil compared to the military dictatorship that took over her now.

61

u/animeman59 10h ago

It's just shitty people running that country all the time

2

u/vayyiqra 5h ago

Shitty, batshit insane, or both.

3

u/DecentFormat 10h ago

Pick your poison man

2

u/aaronupright 8h ago

The military dictatorship kept ethnic and religious hatreds surpassered. Not saying they were some woke grouo, just that they kept and keep a lid on the worst impulses.

27

u/ColdNotion 8h ago

I have to push back, because this simply is not factually correct. The military in Myanmar, the Tatmadaw, pursued a policy of ethnic prejudice and Buddhist supremacy for decades before Aung San Suu Kyi took power. They spread anti-Rohingya propaganda for decades, denied Rohingya legal citizenship, and supported multiple rounds of ethnic cleansing in the decades before the recent genocide. The laid the groundwork for the killings, they didn’t prevent them.

Adding to that, while the genocide happened during the “democratic” period of 2015-2020, it’s important to remember that the junta never allowed the military to actually fall under civilian political control. To the contrary, the Tatmadaw was totally independent of civilian rule, per the constitution. When violence broke out between the Rakine and Rohingya communities, the Tatmadaw shrewdly saw an opportunity to destabilize the civilian government’s global standing. They heavily participated in the killing, and were the primary agents of genocide in many areas, knowing full well that many bigoted members of the civilian government would support their efforts.

This created a difficult choice for Aung San Suu Kyi. She could either criticize the genocide, causing a divide in the civilian government and promoting a confrontation with the military they were not ready for, or she could deny it was happening, turning the civilian government into a pariah on the global stage. Now obviously she went with the latter, which I honestly think was inexcusably wrong. I’m not going to defend her on the choice. It resulted in thousands more dying, and doomed the civilian government when the military staged another coup in 2021, as they didn’t have the international community to support them. That said, to say the junta was somehow the good guy in this is wildly incorrect, they used genocide as a tool of their own political advancement.

5

u/Plaploplap 8h ago

As if international moral support would have changed anything in 2021. The military were the worst, they were condemned as usual, and kept on with their dictatorship. Has international community help Iran achieve democracy in 2026 ?

1

u/ColdNotion 3h ago

I agree it wouldn’t have prevented the coup in 2021, which was likely inevitable as soon as the Tatmadaw felt the civilian government could actually challenge its grip on power. That said, I don’t think international support would have necessarily just been moral. We could have seen broader sanctioning of Tatmadaw leadership and their cronies, intelligence sharing with the NUG, and maybe even military advisors for some of the pro-democracy rebel groups. Those wouldn’t have prevented the civil war, but would have been major assets. If Aung San Suu Kyi was trying to delay a confrontation with the Tatmadaw by not taking a stance on the genocide, I don’t know that the time gained was worth the potential support that was lost, given that the coup still happened.

1

u/RFeepo 2h ago

So you're saying hatred hasn't been surpassered?

1

u/ColdNotion 2h ago

What do you mean by “surpassered”?

0

u/RFeepo 1h ago

You replied with a very thoughtful and articulate response to someone who used the word surpassered. I thought there was an element of levity in that dichotomy and made a sarcastic comment.

-11

u/Initial_E 8h ago

You should know the myanmese don’t see the Rohingya with the same eyes as the west do. What they see is a people who resist conformity and civilization, insisting on a way of life that exasperates 2 countries by their constant flowing back and forth across the border to exploit economic situations.

19

u/Mr_Subtlety 6h ago

Oh, well that makes genocide seem much more reasonable!