Your point about personal resilience is spot on. That's what's most striking. Like watching Ronald Reagan laugh as people make jokes about his intelligence. Also, people freely joked about race, ethnicity, and religion in ways that are shocking now. All these current conversational barriers really foster racism and the idea of the other, I think. Being able to laugh about those taboo subjects really exposed them as silly, and revealed our common humanity.
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This hits home for me. I self censor constantly to avoid conflict. I don't want to come across as rude, so it's hard to strike a balance.
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