[inopinatus]

There are other ways to offend someone from Eastern Europe, or more generally almost any country. It's not unusual for some painful recent history to be still a raw nerve.

Slavery is a significant topic in the US. It was a prelude to the civil war; it was abolished within recent memory; and the echoes of racist sentiment still affect the lives of millions: people alive today remember segregation, and both casual and systematic discrimination against African-Americans continue to occur.

This is not a big deal in Poland, which has no such extensive recent history with slavery.

But - for example - in 2015 the Russian ambassador in Warsaw was excoriated in public and summoned to the foreign ministry for his remarks partly blaming Polish policy in the 1930s for contributing to the start of WW2 and the subsequent death of millions of Poles. Now that was a raw nerve.

A different standard does not mean the absence of standards. People who fail to see that, and then mock others, are simply demonstrating a lack of self-awareness.

[Ralfp]

>A different standard does not mean the absence of standards.

But that was the point I was arguing for. That US standard is not everyone's standard.

[inopinatus]

Then we are in agreement. My remark was not a rebuttal to yours.