@Morbid I'm sorry, but I had to facepalm really hard at your answer, because the only thing you did was show us you don't understand what the Soviet Union was or what the EU is now.
As someone who began life under one of the most brutal communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and is now a citizen of the EU, let me make it very clear - you come across as that kid who gets given everything by his parents but then throws a temper tantrum because they wouldn't buy him a pony for Christmas. You're not oppressed, you're spoiled.
Likewise, the EU is not a dictatorship, not by a long shot - it's very much a democracy, with all the inefficiency that that entails - just think of the fact that, for any good idea someone has in Brussels, there's bound to be someone who will block it simply because it came from the wrong country, or because they want to use the opportunity to wrangle some concession out of that particular proponent or some other petty thing like that.
The best analogy I can find to how the EU works is as a a bunch of bickering neighbours living in the same building having a tenant's meeting - one of them likes to throw his cigarette buts on the stairs at night, there's another guy that lets his dog crap in the front yard but both of those have a problem with the guy who sings in the shower at three AM, all while the building manager tries to get everyone to get back on track to the original problem of the malfunctioning elevator or wherever other problem popped up that week. And because everyone gets a turn at being the building manager, then the guy who lives on the ground floor will ignore the elevator problem when it's his turn because he doesn't care about it no matter what the others think...
And the sad part is that a lot of politicians use the EU as an excuse for the stupid or arseholeish things they do. "Oh, this thing that's bad for everyone but benefits me personally? I didn't want to do it, but it's the EU that's forcing me to, honest" and then you swallow that bullshit, hook, line and sinker and complain about "EU tyranny", when the truth of the matter is that the EU has very little control about what member states do in their own countries.
Take for example the situation in my native Romania three years ago - the party in power was a bunch of greedy arseholes who tried to pass a law legalising corruption to keep their party leader out of jail - first they tried to frame it exactly as "oh it's an EU mandate", but got called on it, especially since they got to power by playing the populist anti EU card. The we went out into the streets and protested, so they had to switch track and claim it was actually "to ease prison congestion". Again, they got called out on it, and they tried to organise a referendum to get the power they needed - and again got rebuffed bad. Long story short, the governement fell and the party leader is now in jail, as he deserves. All throughout, all the EU could do was "look on in alarm", wring their hands in anguish and pen a strongly worded letter to the Romanian government in order to stop their foolishness. They couldn't even threaten economic sanctions or withholding European funds, because we're so bad at using EU funds we've never managed to use more than 13% of what was available each year...
And speaking of EU funds, do you know how that works? Simply put, it's a system where every member pays a fee proportional to their economy (like how the afore mentioned tenants have to pay for utilities) and then the money gets pooled and gets assigned for whatever needs it most - sure, that guy who lives on the ground floor will complain that "his" money is being used to repair the elevator, because he doesn't use it, and it's exactly that kind of egotistical, narrow minded thinking that capitalism fosters and destroys societies - "if it doesn't benefit me personally, I won't help"
Anyway, coming back to the whole "Soviet Union" analogy - the fact that the UK just upped and left (and let's face it, the thee years it took to accomplish that is their own incompetence, not the EUs) shows you that the EU is nothing like the ol' USSR. Do you know what happened when Hungary tried to implement reforms in 1956 and the Czechoslovaks tried to do the same in 1968? Mind you, this was not even an attempt to leave yet, just to ease up on the oppression a little - well, the Soviets would have none of it and sent their tanks in both times and innocent people died.
And after all that, you have the gall to compare the two, you spoiled brat...
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@Morbid I'm sorry, but I had to facepalm really hard at your answer, because the only thing you did was show us you don't understand what the Soviet Union was or what the EU is now.
As someone who began life under one of the most brutal communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and is now a citizen of the EU, let me make it very clear - you come across as that kid who gets given everything by his parents but then throws a temper tantrum because they wouldn't buy him a pony for Christmas. You're not oppressed, you're spoiled.
Likewise, the EU is not a dictatorship, not by a long shot - it's very much a democracy, with all the inefficiency that that entails - just think of the fact that, for any good idea someone has in Brussels, there's bound to be someone who will block it simply because it came from the wrong country, or because they want to use the opportunity to wrangle some concession out of that particular proponent or some other petty thing like that.
The best analogy I can find to how the EU works is as a a bunch of bickering neighbours living in the same building having a tenant's meeting - one of them likes to throw his cigarette buts on the stairs at night, there's another guy that lets his dog crap in the front yard but both of those have a problem with the guy who sings in the shower at three AM, all while the building manager tries to get everyone to get back on track to the original problem of the malfunctioning elevator or wherever other problem popped up that week. And because everyone gets a turn at being the building manager, then the guy who lives on the ground floor will ignore the elevator problem when it's his turn because he doesn't care about it no matter what the others think...
And the sad part is that a lot of politicians use the EU as an excuse for the stupid or arseholeish things they do. "Oh, this thing that's bad for everyone but benefits me personally? I didn't want to do it, but it's the EU that's forcing me to, honest" and then you swallow that bullshit, hook, line and sinker and complain about "EU tyranny", when the truth of the matter is that the EU has very little control about what member states do in their own countries.
Take for example the situation in my native Romania three years ago - the party in power was a bunch of greedy arseholes who tried to pass a law legalising corruption to keep their party leader out of jail - first they tried to frame it exactly as "oh it's an EU mandate", but got called on it, especially since they got to power by playing the populist anti EU card. The we went out into the streets and protested, so they had to switch track and claim it was actually "to ease prison congestion". Again, they got called out on it, and they tried to organise a referendum to get the power they needed - and again got rebuffed bad. Long story short, the governement fell and the party leader is now in jail, as he deserves. All throughout, all the EU could do was "look on in alarm", wring their hands in anguish and pen a strongly worded letter to the Romanian government in order to stop their foolishness. They couldn't even threaten economic sanctions or withholding European funds, because we're so bad at using EU funds we've never managed to use more than 13% of what was available each year...
And speaking of EU funds, do you know how that works? Simply put, it's a system where every member pays a fee proportional to their economy (like how the afore mentioned tenants have to pay for utilities) and then the money gets pooled and gets assigned for whatever needs it most - sure, that guy who lives on the ground floor will complain that "his" money is being used to repair the elevator, because he doesn't use it, and it's exactly that kind of egotistical, narrow minded thinking that capitalism fosters and destroys societies - "if it doesn't benefit me personally, I won't help"
Anyway, coming back to the whole "Soviet Union" analogy - the fact that the UK just upped and left (and let's face it, the thee years it took to accomplish that is their own incompetence, not the EUs) shows you that the EU is nothing like the ol' USSR. Do you know what happened when Hungary tried to implement reforms in 1956 and the Czechoslovaks tried to do the same in 1968? Mind you, this was not even an attempt to leave yet, just to ease up on the oppression a little - well, the Soviets would have none of it and sent their tanks in both times and innocent people died.
And after all that, you have the gall to compare the two, you spoiled brat...