🏳️‍⚧️ and I make good posts sometimes!

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smuonsneutrino
@smuonsneutrino

People are pretty caught up at approximately any given moment about some fucked up thing happening in the US/on behalf of the US government that people forget that we do, in fact, have a bunch of cultural/political things that are cool and good and rare/uniqe. Furthermore, lots of critiques of American culture are made by Europeans who are entirely too high on their own supply. My contrarianism is in full go mode right now so I'm going to chost about how The US Is Cool And Europeans Have No Right To Throw Stones, because I'm tired of Americans being doomers and I'm tired of Europeans being smug.


Freedom to be a complete dick to any politican you want

Americans undervalue this but like, my dude. So many countries make it illegal or effectively illegal to be an asshole to politicians. We don't have that! You can just, name-call and disrespect whoever you want! This is both surprisingly rare and also rad as hell.

(Also seriously what the fuck, why are European laws like that? Why is it still illegal to impersonate Nobility? Why do so many of you still have protections against insulting your royal families? Why do so many of you still have royal families?????)

If you think the average American is racist, try talking to a European about the Roma (or the Jews. or the Polish. or Slavs generally. or Immigrants)

Like, listen guys. Have you ever talked to a European who wasn't selected into yous social bubble? Do you have any idea how many fucking weird comments about race and slurs come out of their mouths? Have you ever heard the shit that otherwise-seemingly-reasonable Finns will say about the Sami? Or what any European will say about the Roma? (Or for that matter, the fact that they still say a slur instead of saying "Roma" despite the fact that they definitely know better? At least most Americans who use the slur either don't know it's a slur or don't know that the Roma are a real cultural group and not just a term for "nomad".)

Or just, like, the thick ominous smog of antisemitism that blankets Europe? Seriously, Antisemitism exists in the US but in Europe it's like 10 times worse. It's the fucking norm. The reason the "Corbyn is Antisemitic" attacks worked in the UK is that frankly it's very, very believable that any given MP is an antisemitic sack of shit, regardless of how overblown and stupid that whole debacle was.

The US has a racist history and you're probably aware of it! But my god, it's every country, everywhere. They're all like this. The US is just big and very present on the English-speaking internet. Furthermore, the US is ethnically diverse enought that minority voices actually get heard. If the EU was one giant country they'd be in no place to throw stones, but instead there are a ton of little countries that all did shit just as bad (if not worse) relative to their size, and that history just isn't treated as a single narrative like it is for the US.

At least when people talk about immigration in the US the racist rhetoric is always "the specific refugees are criminals" and not like, "keep germany german". Seems way more fixable, way more obviously irrational, way more counter-messageable. Idk man, it's super fucking dire. Othering immigrants seems to be a universal, and that sucks shit, but America is (all things considered) weirdly good about it, as terrible as our immigration policy is.

Food

The US's food culture is god-tier. The only country even in the competion with us on this one is China, and afaict they're still behind. The variety of cuisines you can get in any arbitrary American city is amazing. Sure, you can probably get good Jamaican food in London or Berlin, and I know for a fact there are a few places in Chile that you can get good Chinese food. But motherfucker, it's not every city. Every major city in the US has at a minimum one or two pretty fucking good Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Ethiopian restaurants, plus a smattering of other cultural foods as is unique to the city's immigration history (French, German, Taiwanese, Colombian, Brazilian, you name it, two dozen American cities have a couple great places). No other country has this to the extent that the US does and it's glorious.

Plus! PLUS! (And the Europeans aren't going to want to hear this) our Beer scene is basically unmatched. Maybe Belgium and Germany can try to outdo us. Maybe. But if you're in Colorado or Virginia or Wisconsin or Washington? Listen man, I'm not an IPAs guy, I like stouts and doppelbocks and other beers that taste like Darkness, America has too many IPAs, but even I can always find two or three great unique beers anywhere that has a beer list with local beers on it. Our ciders are fucking fantastic too.

AND we have barbeque. Now, in fairness, there's only consistently good barbeque in The South (minus Virginia), Lower Midwest (minus Illinois), and Kentucky (The State Which Defies Categorization). But still. It's a highly-region-sensitive, widespread culinary tradition with a ton of unique flavors and you can't really get the good stuff outside of the US. Other countries do have smoked meat traditions, but none of them are like ours, dammit.

The (current) Democrats are probably better than their center-left peers in Europe

Dude Europeans are even more addicted to the neoliberal koolaid than the US. They fucking love austerity and they're obsessed with not running a deficit. The EU has asinine rules about it. It's fucking weird. The US will happily just borrow money like crazy to make shit happen, and that's good.

Not to mention, the Democrats, for all of their flaws, want to raise taxes on the rich and start new social programs. Given a supermajority, the Democrats would at least happily shore up Obamacare. Do you really think that's true of, say, modern-day Labour or SPD? That they would even think to create the welfare state if it didn't already exist? HAHAHAHAHAHA

And sure, the Democrats can be bad allies, but like, have you seen how European center-left parties treat Trans people? (or in a lot of countries, even the whole umbrella of queer folks?) How Europe's center-left parties talk about Immigration? I am not saying that the Democrats are Good And You Should Stop Complaining, I'm saying that holy fucking shit it could be so much worse. Keep the pressure up, because it's fucking working. In terms of velocity and even acceleration I genuinely beleive the the American center-left is doing markedly better than its European/Austrailian/NZ contemporaries.

The United States Postal Service

Have you ever tried interfacing with DHL? It sucks. USPS rules. I do not need to say more. Please pressure your reps to let USPS sell merch again so I can buy 30 USPS t-shirts and an officially licensed mail carrier bag.

Dat sweet sweet nature

America didn't manage to clear-cut literally all of its forests and completely fuck its ecology forever. We still have old-growth forests. We still have Bears (look at the historic vs current range of bears in Europe, I dare you). We still have wolves. We're starting to repopulate bison. Do you have any idea how much of an accomplishment this all is?

And that's not to mention that we have the National Parks, which are almost all great. And huge. And relatievly available to the public. Other countries do not have this, not to this extent. The NPS kicks ass.

Not to mention that we have great nature in like every imaginable biome. We got tropical island, we got big desert (sand), we got big desert (rocks), we got old growth forest, we got limestone cliff zone, we got mountains (rockies, appalachians, ozarks, sierras), we got BEEG RIVER, we got the great plains, we got EVERYTHING. And, in particular, we have a culture of appreciating this fact.

American accents are good and also holy shit the French and Brititsh can fuck off with the pronunciation pretension

Upper Midwest accents are the best in the world and I WILL HEAR NO SLANDER. But also, I feel like the rest of the world hears Americans as having "one accent" but it's usually pretty damn obvious what vague part of the country someone was born in just by the way they talk.

And before any Brits or French try to get uppity about how we pronounce words, I ask you to go listen to a Brit say "junta" or a Frenchman say "hamburger". Y'all live in the glass-est house that was ever made of glass.

Snarky bonus round: I think American spelling has one (1) strict advantage over British spelling where British spelling has zero (0) advanages over American spelling. The advantage is that "Analyses" and "Analyzes" are orthographically contrastive. I cannot think of any case where British English does better. American spelling ftw

A lot of the really bad stuff is getting better faster than you'd think it is (or isn't actually much worse than Europe)

Black incarceration rate? Way down. Drug incarceration? Way down. Crime? We're one of the safest. Housing crisis? Bad, but not nearly as bad as most other "Westernized" countries in a lot of ways.

Hell, even adjusted for purchasing power, the median American is better off than most places, even in Europe. If you believed reddit, you'd think that America is some unique economic hellscape, and yeah, in some ways it really is the case that you're more likely to get screwed over in the US. But on balance? Even in real living condition/wage terms we're doing pretty good. If you exclude London, the UK is doing worse that Mississippi, famously the poorest and most downtrodden state. And including London only puts it ahead of 6 US states.

Music

Listen. Americans invented Jazz, R&B, Rock, Blues, AND Hip-Hop. Everyone wants a taste of that. Our music rules and you can't fucking deny it. (And white americans, I swear to fucking god, if you were having some thought like "oh well that's mostly Black music, not Americans in general", please play that back in your head until you can internalize that Black Americans are Americans, and contribute to broader American culture. We're not some separate group)

Conclusion

Look. criticize the US government all you want. If you have real experience with it, criticize our culture too.

I'm just so fucking tired of Americans (esp. White Americans, capital-W White, the cultural group, as opposed to like, European immigrants to the US) acting like doomers who need to feel Extra Layers Of American White Guilt. No you don't. Every country is like this, America is just big and easy to make fun of. You do not need to feel guilty for the shitty things your govenment does unless you are currently supporting those things or have recently supported those things. The institutions are just way bigger than you. I promise you, there are things about America you like and you probably wouldn't even realize unless you lived somewhere else for a while.

And I'm tired of Europeans talking shit like they don't live in glass houses. As if Europeans don't do systemic racism or treat their poorest people like shit or engage in the most profane layers of neoliberal dumbassery. You're right that Americans don't know shit about your country, but THERE ARE LIKE 50 OF THEM, and if we wanted to be fair here, like, what do you know about Oklahoma? How much do you really know about Florida (more people than Romania)? How much do you know about Missouri (more people than Ireland)? Not to mention that most of the original resources to learn all that stuff aren't in English. Like. How are we supposed to read it? If you're reading this, you speak English, it's easy for you to be informed about the US. It's not so easy for me to be infomed about Germany or France, at least not in the same level of detail.


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in reply to @smuonsneutrino's post:

I'm glad I gave this post a fair shake. You're right, there are things about America that I actually do like quite a bit. It's too easy to take them for granted, or to minimize them to avoid looking like you're shilling for the status quo.

Thanks for mentioning the antisemitism problem over there! It's scary how ubiquitous it seems. We might end up moving to Europe for work and the list of countries we'd feel safe in, much less thrive and be able to practice our faith in, is uh a pretty short list haha. In a growing number of EU countries some of our practices are just outright outlawed :1

It's easy to take it for granted how much safer the states are, hopefully we all can push back against any change to that part of our country

As a French immigrant, every time I go back to visit France, the number 1 thing I miss is (good) Mexican or Indian food. That shit is basically impossible to get outside of the big cities (which is a problem because there's maybe 15 of them total in all the country).

(And yeah, French people shouldn't also act smug about racism waves at islamophobia there lol)

If I wanted people to re-learn that patriotism can simply be appreciating what your country does right (without stopping calling out what's fucked up) instead of MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR WRONG and whoring yourself in symbols... I'd point them to this post first. That is exactly how much I appreciate it because I agree with every-goddamn-fucking-word in it. That's such a healthier approach I have hope again we can reclaim this damn concept.

I mean, from an online American perspective it feels like a bunch of people snarking about the US at you and only identifying themselves as "European" much of the time. The Europeans tend to stand together in snarking on the US (and hold similar stereotypes abt us). Meanwhile because it's like 50 countries, there isn't time to defend ourselves from the snark one by one.

My experience as an American who moved to Sweden is that many people here actually have a rosier picture of the US than I do. Many people don't understand why I would want to live elsewhere, and the US is kind of seen as something to aspire to. People know the problems, and often a weird distorted view of them, but don't really understand how bad they are.

Like, some of the stuff in this post is true, especially the racism, but this picture of "smug Europeans" doesn't resonate with me at all.

I don't know specifically where this post comes from, but it feels like it's in conversation with maybe an internet phenomenon rather than something more solid.

You're right that this is very much about my experience of "online" Europeans & Americans who have internalized very weird ideas about Europe from them. (After all, online is how most American-European contact happens nowadays.) In many spaces (most notably IME on Twitter, Bsky, Reddit, and the absolute Hell World that is Left-ish or Leftist Facebook Groups) it is very easy to end up in a conversation with people talking shit about America/Americans as if the air is made of bullets and everyone has $10000000 of government-mandated medical debt. I absolutely do see people get bullied for being American and I see other Americans join in on the doom.

"America is a 3rd world country" is a super, super common refrain, and Americans who have internalized this "Europe is superior look at what this European said about it" mentality are also extremely common. Related and also common ideas are,"Americans have no culture", "America doesn't have anything the rest of the world doesn't", "Your healthcare system is a mess and you all only speak one language so you don't get to have an opinion about politics" (that last one is oddly specific but I have genuinely seen it come up in multiple completely unrelated communities). (And yeah, a lot of these sentences are just factually wrong & stupid & problematic in their own right.)

Friends of mine who either are European or have lived in Europe (mostly Italy, France, Poland, Russia, and the UK) have said this sort of thing is fairly common irl as well though (esp. Fraice and the UK). My sample for the Nordics is pretty low, so it might be less common there?