“The US should do X and they suck because they don’t!” Each state has it’s own laws on education. Some places suck, some do not. It’s not a monolith.
“The US has shitty beer lol” We have some of the best beer in the world but it’s local/state/region only and never exported unlike fancy Euro beer.
The US for better or worse is a, hmmm 🤔 a unity of government states under a federation called America. It’s very hard to get federal laws and bills passed, especially for education. The states want the power to chooses for themselves what they do, and the federal government hangs above them, sometimes intervening.
We are a huge country that has a relatively unique circumstance of government, population, and young brutal history. I’m a Californian and I live in the Bay Area which almost literally a different country than most of America, especially the South and Midwest.
I’m so sick of people, especially smug Europeans, talking like they know Americans and America but they don’t really know shit about us except the movies and going to NYC and Miami.
Yes I am having a bad day.
To be honest I love Europe and have friends there that I miss dearly! I’ve been many times. But dumbassery is dumbassery.
EDIT: You people are an exhausting swarm of pecking ravens and I’ve spent all the “toxic” energy I want arguing with half you because you just hear what you want to hear and fit the stereotype I loathe I think you only commented out of trained reflex and a few of you are just unsophisticated haters. Whatever, fuck you, and all that jazz.
Like it or not, you’re a superpower.
What you do, and how you do it matters to the rest of the planet.
We have no choice but to watch, and what we see isn’t encouraging.
A single country when it’s convenient, 50+ semi independent governments when it comes time to deal with criticism?
The United States is a country. You don’t get to pretend that it’s not just because it’s internally chaotic. The United States is the parts that make it up. Explaining why it is dysfunctional doesn’t stop it from being dysfunctional. And it is dysfunctional…
That isn’t the point of my post. Yeah, it a country and it’s fucked up. But what you think of as dysfunctional we call that the feature. That’s literally the point of the whole shebang. But yeah it’s also dysfunctional but I wasn’t talking about that. It’s about broadstoked accusations of “Americans” who are 320M people in the most diverse country in the world that chaps my ass, especially coming from a bullying, superior, dick in a turtleneck (my Eurodouche stereotype of choice).
There is a trail of corruption, poverty, death and destruction everywhere America gets involved in the world. This country loves war and profits from it. Social reforms are in reverse gear at the federal level. Your healthcare is shite and no one can afford to buy a house. The gap between rich and poor has grown exponentially with the richest paying the least tax. This is a country run by mendacious and violent con men for idiots. Not only do you have a gigantic and corrupt military industrial complex, you also have a prison industrial complex, with more prisoners than any other industrialised nation. America sucks ass bro.
I’m really nice to people, and love being around them. I love hosting parties with my friends/family/roommates to drink and play Magic and watch movies. I bet your little imagination is grinding hard to come up with scenarios that makes me secretly hated or that I’m making this all up. Maybe you don’t care at all. In any case I am getting “help” but toxicity in the face of bullying, stupidity, and arrogance from ignorant cunts an ocean away just doesn’t seem to come up very much in therapy.
Well in theory if it were unpopular it would have more up votes. Maybe there are lurkers who agree with my “stupid” opinion that people should shut their mouth on things they don’t understand. Take you for example, you don’t understand this post and why I made it, ipso facto…
Except the one government at the top is the one that interacts with every other nation on the planet and is usually the one making policies and taking actions that piss everyone else. And like it or not, these policies and actions are decided by the congress and the president, which everyone in the U.S. is responsible for electing the people there. And when you look at that federal governmnt, well let me tell ya that it doesn’t reflect very well on Americans.
If you want to go on foreign policy, sure. The federal government is usually the lead. However, there are a lot of things handled at the state and local level that Europeans love to extrapolate to all the USA when it doesn’t go that far.
Outside of Vermont, New York, Colorado and California, there really aren’t a lot of places in the US that seem normal to the rest of the world. And if you go at the county level, it gets worse it seems.
Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maine. And then large parts of most other states. You do realize more than 50% of America is very in line with most of western Europe… right?
I find it hard to believe that Vermont Colorado and California even fit in with Western European standards considering the absolute lack of any useful public transportation in any of those states. Even NY only resembles Europe in NYC, upstate NY is some of the worst parts of the US to live in.
Yes unlike other countries that dont have any sort of local government whatsoever.
Like the UK is one big monolith government. Definitely not 4 individual countries with their own parliaments that have counties with their own local governments and those counties have local councils with their own councillors and bylaws.
Germany only has the German government, not seperate states.
Spain doesnt have regions that are trying to gain independence.
France doesnt have regions on the other side of the atlantic with their own local government.
Canada doesnt have provinces
Nor does Autralia have states
etc. etc. for literally every country except like the vatican.
America is just so special and different
Special and different enough that it should be wearing a helmet and have childproof caps on the paste.
Honestly though, America is different and special. We have states the size of the some of those countries, and states with GDPs that eclipse most of the countries you listed. Local government is a completey different scale at some levels than any of those countries you mentioned. It’s important to remember we are all different, and that’s not a bad thing.
Not the topic at hand but sure.
All those governments you listed were modeled, in part, by the ol Dead Presidents of American lore and the brilliant Iroquois Federation.
But yes, partially those are true, but those national governments behave much differently than the US’s. Birmingham’s county is not an independent state from Manchester. The meaning of United States is lost in it being the name but we are a federation of countries ie. a bunch of countries inside one big one.
And we are special and different at good, bad, and evil things. Always to the maximum it seems. I know it must be such crackup to laugh at America… And fair enough we all do it. But when outsiders do it based off ignorance, complete ignorance, it makes me go ballistic. Your Freshman level dig proves my point so fucking hard its hard to breathe, with the exception of Spain because it was just so stupid as to be a non-sequitur.
Birmingham’s county is not an independent state from Manchester.
Yes because those are cities. Not states. So you’re purposely making a bad comparison.
Scotland and England are partially independent countries, so would be the far more appropriate comparison to different US states. And is why i mentioned them as such in my previous comment.
but we are a federation of countries
No, you are a federation of STATES hence the ‘S’ in USA, with a couple of exception your states weren’t their own countries. Unlike say the UK where Scotland England and Wales have been their own individual countries before unification for longer than there have been white people in the Americas. And now still have their own governments, laws and culture and as such are as or more individual than US states. And it’s the same with German states as well and most of my other examples too.
And we are special and different at good, bad, and evil things.
I wish you’d said this at the start so I wouldn’t have wasted my time replying to someone that unironically believes in American exceptionalism.
But when outsiders do it based off ignorance, complete ignorance
It’s not complete ignorance. I have much better grasp of American internal politics than you do of any other country.
I really wish we left people like you behind on reddit.
You mentioned counties of the UK, so I mentioned the cities because I have no idea what counties they are in but assume they are different. If you’re talking about the countries then yeah, that’s more similar to the US. I should have said so.
But you’re wrong about the federation. A solid handful of them were (briefly) countries before they were “STATES”, but some were properties/colonies of foreign governments, and with the exception of the 13 colonies, all independent lands with their own laws and currency. Also, this is beside the fact the natives were murdered and their land stolen by Europeans and/or Americans. Then, the idea of statehood was floated as a way of keeping them independent under a common roof, analogous to countries. I suppose there’s a room for interpretation, but not by much. They operated under their own law, money, norms, cultures, and religions. They were founded as, and remain separate but united states (From MW: a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory - especially : one that is sovereign)
German states are very much a bunch of old countries and tribes, sure. Cool. And? Why are you under the impression that being similar is in anyway important?
Read the fucking post. I said, paraphrasing, people who generalize/judge America don’t know how America works and are ignorant and smug. I wouldn’t do the same to your fucking country, but here I am, defending mine from smug ignoramuses.
And yeah, wooooow we get it, the Old World is older than the New World. Amazing how that is such an unearned point of pride from Europeans that only Europeans make. The Chinese don’t play that card, the Egyptians don’t play that card, and the Japanese don’t play that card but lo and behold some clown online regularly goes to a dingy pub established in 1698, in some backwater village, and they’re the Wise Grandfathers of America.
You call it American Exceptionalism, I call it the country everybody moves to and makes cool shit, choking the poor on their way, and bombing people on occasion.
And it isn’t a high bar to know more than me about other nation’s internal politics, except Mexico and Canada. None of Europe’s or anybody’s matter to me or anyone else here besides the big stuff. I have 50+ states/territories in my own backyard to care about. It literally doesn’t matter because Europe, for example, is 3.5k miles or more away and I’m not going to be an arrogant, self-righteous, know-it-all, ignorant, condescending, annoying fucking asshole to those people about their dramas and politics when I talk to them.
