I feel like Western countries are so far removed from fascism, coddled by modern society's comforts, and lucky enough to have avoided war on their soil, that the populations therein have legitimately forgotten what it's like to live in a world without democracy.
We take everything for granted. We forget that the ease with which we move through life is dependent upon complicated governmental/cultural/social/economic systems, which people before us spent entire generations developing so that we may bear their fruit.
Instead of honoring this gift with awareness and humility, we accept it as something inherent to our reality, unaware of the fact that it needs to be continually maintained, protected, and iterated upon.
Other than the Civil War, the US has never really had war on its on soil, however Europe has, many who lived through WWII are either very old or have already passed away. Europe has war in Ukraine but had conflict in the Balkans within living memory (early 90s)
So other than 9/11, the US has never really had mass casualties on home soil ( mass shootings aside ) but the US and the west just inflict this on others, either directly or by supplying weapons, not sure if we can call Israel (under recent regimes) as a proxy to the US, in a similar way we call Hezbola or Hamas proxies to the US.
