General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So, what "Shithole" country did your ancestors come from? [View all]customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)certainly for most of the last five hundred years while Europeans were colonizing the Americas, you could well describe the places they came from as shitholes. In all of Europe, you had a rich royal class that owned nearly everything of value, you had religiously-motivated wars that killed millions, and you had conditions where diseases were rampant. Add to that the lack of religious, association, and speech freedoms, and you can see why so many risked a potentially deadly long sea voyage to escape.
I have used the term Third World hellholes to describe places that exist today in the same aspects that I just used to describe Europe in less enjoyable times. Can I disparage a place without necessarily disparaging its people? Can the residents of other nations protest what the United States does without necessarily condemning 100% of its voters?