I suppose I should ask on behalf of my fellow ignoramuses why that persepolis quote is bad. I thought it was prescient, particularly to highlight the common humanity between the people of two countries that are hostile to each other. I don't think the part about our governments being the same are correct as America's worse for the world, but I didn't expect people to hate the quote that much.
In the era we live in, a government cannot exist independently of its people, "the usamerican government & the usamerican people" are not completely unrelated entities that happen to be on the same land with the people having no influence whatsoever on the government, nor is that true for any country on earth, let alone the Iranian people. The quote tries to ignore this reality by pretending as though the people of all countries are unrelated victims of their governments
While the "east" and "west" aren't perfect descriptions the world is very much divided! Again, the political scene does not exist independently of the population! Denying this reality denies the very context all governments currently exist in and make their decisions based on, it is denying the very active global hegemony's oppression, it therefore denies how the governments of SWANA exist in relation to it: sucking up to the west in expense of the populace and / or trying to protect the populace, it denies the victimhood of all Iranian people within this order actively hostile and deadly to their very life because it pretends such a hostile order does not exist in the place.
As you said it yourself too, "(our) governments being as bad as USA is incorrect". It is actually the worst offender here, the above so far is a deeply flawed understanding of how states & the world order operates. This deeply flawed understanding piles up to logically result in the final misconception: That the US; the deadly force that has been causing suffering and mayhem in SWANA for over a century, couping and scheming to install puppet regimes that results in the death of millions, dehumanizing everyone within the made up category of "the middle east", (something it carries from the west before it!) and the very aggressor here, is the same as its victims
The Iranian nation is a victim of the US, the Iranian Government does not exist independently of the people, the "just the government, not the people!" play pretend of trying to position the government as seperate from the general populace just furthers the said justification to attack every nation the US victimizes. Therefore it is a very detestable quote, born from mistakes in analysis the citizens of periphery who gather fame in the core unfortunately tend to fall in by passively internalizing the core's logic used to manufacture consent and combining them with the sometimes valid complaints they had of their state, admittedly it can also be from trying to assimilate by appearing as the Good Token Anonymized Person Of The Global South who would never think the opposition to the west is justified
