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Compared to Rest of World Americans are


thedutchiedutch

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Cultural differences exist across borders, and because monoliths are mostly fantasies, often within them, too.

That said, America, in particular, is culturally perplexing, and even confounding, to a lot of the rest of the world.

I am not, as Americans are wont to do, laboring under the delusion that people in other places spend all that much time thinking about us.

We are all, as a species, just trying to get through this thing called life.

The conservative American notion that people with far better healthcare, civil rights laws and gun control “hate our freedom” is a wishful imperialist delusion.

Worse, it’s not fooling anybody at this point.

That said, if all the world’s a stage, America is a prime player: a rich, loud, attention-seeking celebrity not fully deserving of its starring role, often putting in a critically reviled performance and tending toward histrionics that threaten to ruin the show for everybody else. (Also, embarrassingly, possibly the last to know that its career as top biller is in rapid decline.)

To the outside onlooker, American culture—I’m consolidating an infinitely layered thing to save time and space—is contradictory and bizarre, hypocritical and self-congratulatory.

Its national character is a textbook study in narcissistic tendencies coupled with crushing insecurity issues.

How to reconcile a country that fetishizes violence and is squeamish about sex; conflates Christianity and consumerism; says it loves liberty yet made human rights violations a founding principle?

In conversations with non-Americans, should the topic of the U.S. come up, there are often expressions of incredulity and bewilderment about things that seem weird when you aren’t from here.

Talk and think about those things enough, and they also start to seem objectively weird if you are from here, too.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE AND SOURCE : http://sandiegofreepress.org/2016/05/compared-to-rest-of-world-americans-are-delusional-prudish-selfish-religious-nuts-study/

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Oh yeah, we suck. The first step is realizing you have a problem, and most of us haven't gotten over that hurdle.

I swear...if Trump becomes president, I am so outta here.

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Q's and P's...Q's and P's...Q's and P's

Pass the dutchie on the left hand side

Edited by Poppi
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Please note that Dutchie is simply copy and pasting the article. (and then linking it)

He's just passing the message along, no need to attack him for it.

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note: the article doesn't quote one study, it quotes a bunch of them that seem to use different methodologies and come from different times.

so, you know, be cautious about the author's conclusions.

(i was going to say maybe try to avoid insulting the op's country, but that died with the very first response)

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I'm sure they DO find us hard to understand. We can say the same of most of them I guess. The oddities here are a direct result of the wealth that has been ours for so long. I feel no need whatever to apologize to anyone else for my life, choices or my country. As you said, most people are just trying to get through life. Here's the thing. If this country is so flawed then why do most of those who bewail it also want, some desperately, to COME here? And finally, the people here are no more selfish, callous or extreme than those of any other place on the planet. We are a product of our culture and if ANY other nation could change places instantly then you'd quickly see the same behaviors of those people. I know this because America IS those people. They just had the ability to get away from the burdens of their home countries and work for a new life here. Yes, America is on the decline. But even in our sunset we are a freer place than most countries on earth. BTW... when the experiment in human freedom ends here... it will definitely be darker every where else too.

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Americans still have our American pioneer culture, in my opinion. This is our heritage. It's recent, so we still can keep it in mind. We are not a thousand-year-old culture as most other countries are, and don't have that depth of culture's influence. Fortunately or unfortunately, we consider our Hollywood Westerns to be the original civilization from which we have grown as a nation.

The self-reliant cowboys with their six-guns ready are our heroes, I think, even in this modern world and on Wall Street and in government. Look at almost all our popular movies from the beginning, from shoot-'em-up cowboy and Indian movies to private detectives war movies to Star Wars, Transformers and Super-Hero films. This is our culture, like it or not beneficial to us or not.

.

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I swear...if Trump becomes president, I am so outta here.

Is someone keeping track of this?

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Oh yeah, we suck. The first step is realizing you have a problem, and most of us haven't gotten over that hurdle.

I swear...if Trump becomes president, I am so outta here.

We got the whole "refugee" thing going on here now. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more!)

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I was just talking to a woman who got a text message from her niece in the USA, It started out asking "do you have any spare room there, Aunty_______ ? She thought, here we go, they want somewhere to stop on a visit, But apparently it was looking for a refuge if Trump gets elected !

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Is this another Trump thread? I hope not.

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Not like real estate agents to cash in on distressed vendors.

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every thread will, with enough time, become a trump thread.

such is his power. such is his dark, dark power

(also i'm not going anywhere. because i'm agoraphobic. but also because this is my country too, and you can't take that away.

but also the agoraphobia)

Edited by seaturtlehorsesnake
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every thread will, with enough time, become a trump thread.

such is his power. such is his dark, dark power

(also i'm not going anywhere. because i'm agoraphobic. but also because this is my country too, and you can't take that away.

but also the agoraphobia)

Can me and bubblykiss write you in as a third party candidate and get you elected?

What you wrote there in four short lines was more intelligible than what Trump's said in the last 10 months.

Edited by Likely Guy
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What always gets me is that other nations preach to the US and condemn us on some things, yet they'd not have us pull our trade from them. Or pull out of alliances with them. Or not send tourists their way. Even as the US is in decline (and everyone should recognize that it is), we are the biggest economy, the most influential government, the most powerful military.... And the reason for that is our history, and culture, and I feel that to change our culture to be more like Europe or Australia would just be to fast forward the US's decline into mediocrity. And wouldn't those who are not the US love that?

Edited by DieChecker
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Cultural differences exist across borders, and because monoliths are mostly fantasies, often within them, too.

That said, America, in particular, is culturally perplexing, and even confounding, to a lot of the rest of the world.

I am not, as Americans are wont to do, laboring under the delusion that people in other places spend all that much time thinking about us.

We are all, as a species, just trying to get through this thing called life.

The conservative American notion that people with far better healthcare, civil rights laws and gun control “hate our freedom” is a wishful imperialist delusion.

Worse, it’s not fooling anybody at this point.

That said, if all the world’s a stage, America is a prime player: a rich, loud, attention-seeking celebrity not fully deserving of its starring role, often putting in a critically reviled performance and tending toward histrionics that threaten to ruin the show for everybody else. (Also, embarrassingly, possibly the last to know that its career as top biller is in rapid decline.)

To the outside onlooker, American culture—I’m consolidating an infinitely layered thing to save time and space—is contradictory and bizarre, hypocritical and self-congratulatory.

Its national character is a textbook study in narcissistic tendencies coupled with crushing insecurity issues.

How to reconcile a country that fetishizes violence and is squeamish about sex; conflates Christianity and consumerism; says it loves liberty yet made human rights violations a founding principle?

In conversations with non-Americans, should the topic of the U.S. come up, there are often exp<b></b>ressions of incredulity and bewilderment about things that seem weird when you aren’t from here.

Talk and think about those things enough, and they also start to seem objectively weird if you are from here, too.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE AND SOURCE : http://sandiegofreepress.org/2016/05/compared-to-rest-of-world-americans-are-delusional-prudish-selfish-religious-nuts-study/

I agree completely and I am an American. To me, there is so much political play going on.. resulting in things like double standards and loads of hypocrisy. Not too much I can do to change it. I fight the good fight, play guitar, make art and maybe things will smooth out over time but that's nonsense. Everyone's out for personal gain and laws have loopholes and there are ways to fast track success at the expense of being a hypocrit, etc. and it isn't easy to blame these folk for wanting to be lucrative but the checks and balances that do exist aren't up to the task of a 21st Century political hacking contest. At least some of them.

Edited by Skulduggery
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And for what it's worth, Nederland is a beautiful country and I might be in that neck of the woods later this year.

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I'm sure they DO find us hard to understand. We can say the same of most of them I guess. The oddities here are a direct result of the wealth that has been ours for so long. I feel no need whatever to apologize to anyone else for my life, choices or my country. As you said, most people are just trying to get through life. Here's the thing. If this country is so flawed then why do most of those who bewail it also want, some desperately, to COME here? And finally, the people here are no more selfish, callous or extreme than those of any other place on the planet. We are a product of our culture and if ANY other nation could change places instantly then you'd quickly see the same behaviors of those people. I know this because America IS those people. They just had the ability to get away from the burdens of their home countries and work for a new life here. Yes, America is on the decline. But even in our sunset we are a freer place than most countries on earth. BTW... when the experiment in human freedom ends here... it will definitely be darker every where else too.

Yes, there are people who bewail the USA.

Yes, there are people who want, some desperately, to come to the USA.

What makes you think those two categories of people are identical?

Very simply, they're not.

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I like this thread. You should make us sound worse though, maybe then people would stop wanting to come here, and post the exact location of somewhere that sounds way better than here and has a better welfare system so we can lower our crime rate and reinvest the money into a better healthcare system.

Hmm, this could be the seed of a very genius idea. Thank you OP.

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The US isn't bad but it certainly has a huge wealth of dirt and seemingly arrogant political spin. I can't argue this one bit. Remember, don't hate the people, hate the system. Unless we're talking about those ultra creepy Florida beach burn out types who aggressively beg/demand spare change or the backwoods guns, god, government hickabilly. Yeah those guys are also worth avoiding. For the most part, the people are fine in *most* places. Politics just sucks. :/

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I'm sure they DO find us hard to understand. We can say the same of most of them I guess. The oddities here are a direct result of the wealth that has been ours for so long. I feel no need whatever to apologize to anyone else for my life, choices or my country. As you said, most people are just trying to get through life. Here's the thing. If this country is so flawed then why do most of those who bewail it also want, some desperately, to COME here? And finally, the people here are no more selfish, callous or extreme than those of any other place on the planet. We are a product of our culture and if ANY other nation could change places instantly then you'd quickly see the same behaviors of those people. I know this because America IS those people. They just had the ability to get away from the burdens of their home countries and work for a new life here. Yes, America is on the decline. But even in our sunset we are a freer place than most countries on earth. BTW... when the experiment in human freedom ends here... it will definitely be darker every where else too.

You know, that's something I fear, if not in my lifetime then in the lifetimes of my kids. And the frustrating thing seems to be that so many Americans seem to embrace that decline willingly as the price of not wanting to change anything about their current values.

My concerns are as follows:

Firstly, the USA has a lot of friends around the world, both among people and among nations. What's frustrating is when Americans get noisily defensive when their friends point out problems in the USA. It is actually possible for criticism to be constructive, so it'd help if Americans didn't stick their fingers in their ears and start singing "The Star Spangled Banner" loudly (and out of tune) when non-American friends dare to say that there are things that America could change about itself. (A little example I saw recently was the seeming impossibility of getting America to go metric.)

Secondly, yes, America's freedoms are a beacon to many oppressed people around the world, and that's why so many people, particularly from Latin America, want to go to the USA. The problem is that many of these people are either despised or exploited by many Americans when they get to the USA. To many of these people it wouldn't surprise me if they see American freedoms and wealth as being for the benefit only of Americans, and that the message "Give me your tired, your poor, etc etc" on the Statue of Liberty is some sort of cruel joke.

Thirdly, yes, the USA is in decline. The thing is, though, that this decline should be able to be reversed, and without requiring much change to the values that Americans prize. The problem, though, is that too many Americans seem to prefer national decline as opposed to seeing any change in their values, regardless of what sort of country that might leave to their children. This, to me, just doesn't make sense. Any society that refuses to renew itself from time to time is bound for decline. The USA managed this in the middle of the 19th century with a massive civil war that brought about the end of slavery. These days the USA seems to me to be in a situation akin to some combination of the late Roman Republic, the late Western Roman Empire, and France in the 1780s. How events may play out in the coming decades I don't know, but it could so easily be less grim than I worry that it might be.

Fourth, politics is becoming more extreme and intransigent. Too many people on both sides of politics seem to believe the most extreme versions of stories told about the politicians on the opposite side, and when those politicians don't receive the punishment the stories suggest they deserve, people become all the more convinced the political system is broken in favour of the opposite party. (ETA: I might remind you, And Then, that back on 9 March 2016 you said this about Hillary Clinton: "If she is elected then I think everyone who votes for her should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors." Is that a reasonable way to engage in political dialogue?)

You see, I have this vision of a man in his forties who has drunk and smoked all his life. He has a couple of young kids. He's just been to the doctor who's told him that if he keeps drinking and smoking the way he has, he'll be dead in two years; if he cuts back he'll live for another twenty years; and if he stops altogether he could live for another forty years. He comes home and tell his kids, "Well, I'm sorry kids, but I'm going to be dead in two years, cos I'll be danged if I'm going to stop drinking and smoking - it's my right. You're just going to have to work things out for yourselves."

Edited by Peter B
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