Sometimes I think we live in two worlds, and they’re remarkably different. Oh, I don’t even mean left and right in the US, though we should perhaps consider the left a third world (yes, you see what I did there) willfully blind and different from everyone else in the US.
But what the rest of the world thinks they know about the US is like a different world altogether. It’s not even lies precisely. I mean, of course, what they think they know is false and therefore lies. But “lies” doesn’t do the thing justice. It’s more like a complete architecture for a parallel universe, something like what I’d do if creating a parallel world, quite different from ours. “So, if this is different, that is different too.”
Some of it is built on the bizarre assumptions of our left, but then goes further.
Lately, some statistical outfit (sorry, I woke up feeling ill, and can’t remember which) has been doing comparisons between US states and other countries.
We saw the meltdown on twitter in real time when it was revealed Canada is poorer than Alabama. Dear Lord, that was bizarre.
Canadians (real ones, though, yes, also the usual scruff and ruff from third world countries, but I think we can discount those) ran around with their heads on fire, saying what they thought were truthful statements about us. And it was mind bogglingly bizarre. Stuff like “But at least we’re better educated than Alabama.” They could have picked another state, say, California, and have had a better chance of making that fly. But Alabama, though. Alabama, where you can pick Phds in Physics from the ground and bump into highly qualified engineers at any Walmart. Surely they know that NASA is in Alabama? Yes? No? Maybe? And yes, of course our education sucks, but as with everything else, when America catches a cold the rest of the world gets pneumonia. Their education is probably, person by person and measure by measure worse. (And no, don’t talk to me of tests. Most other countries not only spend the time teaching the test, but send their best for international tests. We send random kids.) And while our primary and increasingly secondary and occasionally tertiary education sucks, the US remains the greatest group of auto-didacts the world has ever known. Seriously. Not only are you tube channels on just about all serious disciplines massively successful and frequented increasingly by the young, but we get more non fiction books published on serious academic subjects and sold to the general public than anywhere in the world.
I remember when my poor brother started offering to send me books on world history that he’d just found and he thought it would be difficult to get here: they were all books I’d bought and read years ago, back when I did a lot more history reading than I do today. (I still do it, but I go through phases.) I mean, before Amazon we had History Book Clubs. For a while there, I was writing to pay my History Book Club bill.
But somehow they have this image of us fostered by our own movies that we live between TV and movie and mall, and maybe now game unit, without serious thought or deliberation.
The fact that political and serious debate blogs, equivalent in every way to the pre-revolutionary committees of correspondence have sprung up like weeds here but nowhere else in the world doesn’t dent this certainty.
They also, of course, told us that at lest they could get health care. I have run into this before, with Canadian friends who are utterly convinced if you have a horrible accident and don’t have insurance, the hospital will dump you on the street to fend for yourselves. This is ridiculous, since they are so close to us they should know better. And they avail themselves of our healthcare all the time, too.
Then there was the revelation that Great Britain is poorer, on average, than Kentucky. Not actually a surprise to anyone who has visited normal people in Europe or even (just) paid attention to movies that show the UK and professionals living in the UK. It is quite obvious their “comfortable middle aged professionals” which mind you this being television are probably pitched a little more “glitzy” than in reality live about like our struggling young couples.
But Great Britain, on Twitter, lost its collective mind. Things they said back included, of course that at least they don’t die by the way side for lack of medical care (WHAT, ACTUALLY?) and that they’re not likely to get shot while standing outside their house.
I’ve lived in 4 states in the US. I haven’t ever lived in a place where I’d get shot just standing outside my house. Yes, I know there are neighborhoods where that happens in the US, but I’d bet there are neighborhoods where that happens all over the world, because gun control does nothing to stop criminals acquiring illegal guns. But if you make it really difficult there will just be neighborhoods where you get knifed (hello, UK!) or beaten to death.
And then there’s the utter crazy cakes, where they’re convinced they live better than us on the material level, or that our poor people are all basically homeless. Or of course that ICE is randomly rounding up anyone who tans. The mind boggles.
Today the ex-archbishop of Canterbury, the same man who on occasion expressed doubts as to the existence of G-d or the rightness of Christianity apparently unaware this renders his position moot, claimed our political body here in the US is “demonic” and “possessed.”
And I’m sitting here, sincerely wondering what the heck could get into his head to say that. How it never occurs to him that if that were the case possibly the most religious Christian country left in the world would be packing churches 24/7 and praying prayers of deliverance.
Yes, I know that Europe has this weird mythology that Germany just suddenly out of the blue turned sour and went nuts and no one saw it, because they don’t want to realize what Nazi Germany was take to 11 ideas that all of them were playing with at the time. Instead they have the “Madman led them astray and they didn’t see it” theory, which is cute, but never happened, in the history of ever. That’s not how people work, that’s not how groups work, that’s not how nations work. Not unless you’re in a movie. In the real world it take a generation of serious intellectuals thinking increasingly anti-human and bizarrely evil thoughts and not being reproached, and being treated as though they make sense. And then “suddenly” once the crazy ideology has the bureaucracy, most of the citizens minds at the level of “of course” and gets forceful leadership, yep, you start putting people in ovens. But for a generation you’ve been talking about culling the population for the good of society.
Of course, Europe doesn’t want to face that, because it’s them (and some of our crazier left) making with those ideas. And looking in the mirror and seeing a monster is hard.
But still. We’re here. We’re on the web and available 24/7. We actually talk a lot about how things are in our corner of the world. And if you look on Twitter you can see how few of the crazy doomers are actually American. We are probably the most open nation in the world in terms of having our every day citizens on line running their mouths.
I won’t say we don’t have some evil bastages. Sometimes I identify as one. But seriously? demonic? Possessed? Or in any way comparable to Nazi Germany?
The only way their bubble reality holds is the way the left’s holds. They believe “authorized sources” only, i.e. those who agree with them, and write off normal people talking about their lives and how they are.
It is actually a fascinating lesson in how old habits linger in the rest of the world, old ideas and how the inability to reorient is destroying them.
All we can do is free ourselves, and hope they follow. But some days I despair of them, even if we do turn this ship around.
According To Hoyt 
I can’t help but think of the woman who was claimed to said “nobody I know voted for Nixon” (after Nixon had won the Presidency).
Too many people (European & American) live in an Echo Chamber and don’t even realize it.
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Oh, occasionally they’re forced to face it – like Trump winning the electoral and popular vote, after they’d been assured good and hard by All The Right People that there was no voter fraud.
And they hate us for forcing them to realize that their entire world is small and ignorable.
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That was Pauline Kael and, much as I hate to defend the rank, villainous bitch, that’s a misquote, and her actual quote was at least somewhat more self-aware:
As to villainous bitch, she was a primary reason that David Lean didn’t make a movie for fourteen years. His film Ryan’s Daughter got scathing reviews, and there was some kind of a critics’ dinner held, ostensibly to celebrate him as a filmmaker, that became a cruel roast.
After taking quite a few insults, most centered on Ryan’s Daughter, he, the guest of honor mind, stood and shouted in frustration that none of the critics would be happy unless he made a film with no budget in 16mm and black and white.
Kael cackled, and responded, “Oh, no, little man, well let you have color!”
Lean was so shaken by the event that he didn’t make another film until 1984’s A Passage to India, his last. Kael robbed the world of anywhere from three to five additional David Lean masterpieces.
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IIRC, wasn’t she also the one who started the rumor that Welles didn’t have that much to do with “Citizen Kane?” I hope she spent her life dealing with a crippling rectal itch, as opposed to just BEING one.
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Less “start the rumor” and more “wrote an entire book minimizing Welles’s contribution”. That one is less toxic, to me, because she was working to get recognition for the contribution of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, which had gotten overshadowed by the “Orson Welles, boy genius” narrative.
Naturally, she went entirely too far, as people making such arguments tend to do*, but that was not entirely about destroying a talented man out of pure spite.
/* – See, for example, some of the people who argue that Jack Kirby should get “appropriate credit” for his contributions to the Marvel comics universe. Some of them start by saying “appropriate credit” and devolve quickly into “Stan Lee did nothing but slap words in dialogue balloons, everything else was Kirby”. Usually with as many passive-aggressive and deniable insults to the memory of Stan Lee as they can manage.
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My own (loved and vehemently disagreed with) brother has full blown TDS. Last time he visited he wondered “How long it took the Germans to regret voting for Hitler?”; amazing subtly there. It’s a bitter thing to realize your loved ones think of you someone who supports evil.
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Oh, well, I’m willing to stand before God and own all my choices someday. At least I know He will be just.
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Same with “baby” sister (she turns 65 this year). Talking about mom, sis is a bit upset about her riding over to NE Oregon (E/W Shrine HS game) with an 85-year-old friend (mom is 91). Sis is not “wrong” to worry. But I can’t lock mom up. As long as mom isn’t the one driving (she won’t be). So, I dropped the other road trip bomb on sis. Friend and mom are talking about driving to Tucson/Phoenix, and back, this October, because airline tickets are too high due to fuel. (If I can go, I won’t drive. I don’t care how high fuel costs are.) They are also discussing stops going and coming that air travel would eliminate. That makes it make more sense. Still? No. Just no. But sis? High fuel costs? All Trump’s fault. Biden never let fuel get so high!!!! She has TDS extreme.
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Some of the weird ideas foreigners get about the US is due to the tales tourists and service people tell them just to tweak them and see what they will believe. I met a fellow from Denmark who had a sailor tell him we didn’t have butter in the US – just peanut butter. He believed until he actually came here years later. I suppose you could get away with that much easier pre-internet.
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Once, at an English Corner in Changsha, I was asked by a group of Chinese men whether American women made a fuss about our husbands having girlfriends. I, forgetting that the Chinese didn’t really do sarcasm, replied deadpan that “We American women all have guns,” and was met with a chorus of horrified “WAAAHHH”s, their equivalent of “WHOA.” I realized my mistake, but let it stand without explaining. I hope they’re still wigging out, wherever they are, the philandering bastiches.
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Accurate enough. ^.^
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I mean…you weren’t wrong…
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Wait, the Chinese don’t do sarcasm?! You aren’t having me on there, are you?
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Hand to heart, I am not having you on. I once snarked a “THANKS SO MUCH for walking RIGHT THROUGH MY SHOT” at a dude in Beijing while I was trying to take photos, and he was chuffed.
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I lived in China for five years and I agree. That said, they do use non-literal language, but very differently. It’s more likely in situations such as telling a white lie in order to save face, and the other person is expected to know that it’s a white lie but not pursue the matter.
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Missed a chance though. I guess it was implied. Should have prefaced with “US women do not have to worry about our men wanting or having other girlfriends. We American women are allowed and have guns.” … Just saying.
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They also take what is shown on our tv shows: everything high crime, dramatic deaths because no insurance, etc., “uneducated hicks” threatening educated city folk, and accept it as reality. (Even idiots who LIVE here accept that as reality sometimes.)
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What does he think we use instead of butter? We use butter every day at my house!
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There’s a joke of me saying “I do not eat butter”.
I always preferred margarine, then I went off of dairy entirely.
I think we do have butter in the house, which makes my obnoxious sense of humor sad this minute.
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Graduating from the left to the right ought to be something like a rite of passage. Like growing up, taking your tests and passing. Maybe a certificate or something to hang on the wall.
Because what it is now, is a cult of bad children. They don’t know what they don’t know, and can’t in some cases because the blinders they wear are their own hands pressed firmly over their eyes. They lack the pardonable innocence of true children, but make up for it with credulousness and silly chants. The coddling is real.
Leaving the left is amount to taking personal responsibility- or it should be, notable names and shenanigans being what they are. On the right we believe in dangerous freedom because that puts the onus on us to eventually succeed after pondering the education of many failures. Help each other, sure, but no handouts from the government are wanted or needed. We don’t even believe in the IRS being a meaningful or useful thing, by and large.
As we approach the 250th birthday of this great country, let’s be American as fvck. Love the country, live the values, give no sh!ts about whosoever dirties their adult diapers about it. Bring our fellow Americans together with food, culture, history, and no-holds-barred fun. More and more folks are waking up. Let those who love us be welcomed. And let those who cannot understand us be perpetually confused.
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We bought a new flag for the anniversary. We’ll start using in on Flag day.
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As someone who graduated from high school and started college in 1985 (my school mascot was a pterodactyl), I’m reminded of the comical (and possibly apocryphal) Soviet insistence that the decadent West was full of bloody crime and chaos and that we were all insane, desperate and starving, willing–if not eager–to trade our own parents for burger and blue jeans.
Meanwhile, in reality at the time, my biggest problems were blending my vertical stripes of parakeet-colored eyeshadow, slithering into size 2 Chic jeans, and moussing my hair high enough to make people think I was 5’7″. (I am 5’2″.) I recall no burger issues whatsoever.
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If your school mascot was the pterodactyl then mine must have been an amoeba (1974). I’m at least younger than dirt. Hubby (1970) is older than dirt (by out son).
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I forget the book I read it in, but it described an instance of some Hollywood types trying to do business in cold war Poland. IIRC they had shown them what they thought of as a pretty progressive short film, and the Polish Communists said, “That’s too much US propaganda.”
The film folks were genuinely stunned. “What do you mean?”
“Just look at all those cars outside that factory,” they replied, pointing to a background scene, “That’s so obviously fake. Like factory workers would have cars.”
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Oh, no, certainly not shot. But you can be gang-raped outside a church, sure. That happens from England to Germany all the time. Oh, right, but them’s the “lower classes, gov’ner, so they don’t matter, ya see?”
Heavens to mergatroids, Captain America wasn’t an answer to the Nazis alone. Look up The Strange Case of Dr. Couney some time; everything Steve Rogers was – sickly, 90 pounds soaking wet, asthmatic and picked on by everyone – was a backhanded slap as much to the American Left’s eugenics as to the Nazis. Don’t believe me? Look up The Black Stork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Stork
Movie Steve Rogers was born a year after that film came out. Meant to counter the Nazis? Yes…but also American Leftist “superiority” in the form of eugenics. “Maybe what we need now is the little guy,” indeed!
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They have their own problems with health care, which they try their hardest to forget about. Sarah posted the link at Insty about MF Doom, but others I can think of off the top of my head include Liverpool Care Pathway where they intentionally starved/dehydrated to kill the patients, and Alphie Evans who was denied care, and then not allowed to seek other care elsewhere even though it would cost the state nothing.
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Oh, God save us, Alfie Evans. Straight to hell with anyone involved in making THAT hellish series of bad decisions. That was straight-up murder.
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Alfie Evans, Charlie Gard, and little Isaac. Never, ever forget them – or the 12 year old boy who died when they pulled the plug, despite his family fighting to keep him alive. He had been doing a TikTok challenge and it…went wrong. He might have pulled through but the government determined he should die.
At least he was baptized before they pulled the plug. Catholic baptism – he had been asking for it for a while. So he’ home, but that does not erase the injustice. :'(
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Or that poor young woman who was euthanized in Spain recently.
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They have been fed tons of BS about the US for years by their press and politicians who also tell them how much better off they are than us. They seem to believe that TV shows and movies are somehow the reality of life in America. Even many of the ones who do actually visit the US too often only see some very small segment of it, not enough to get a real feel for the way things are here. Some do get out and learn that things are different than what they grew up hearing but then when they return who is going to believe them?
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Back in the day when I was assigned to Hellenikon AB (on the outskirts of Athens, Greece) I lived next door to an expatriate Englishwoman – Penny – who was about the age of my mom at the time, and had married a lovely Greek gentleman. She was the only one in the neighborhood where I lived in Ano Glyphada who was fluent in English, although my landlord’s sons were learning it in school. I got in the habit of passing on my magazine issues to Penny, when I was done reading them – Harpers’ and Atlantic when they were still fairly mainstream politically, also Smithsonian, maybe American Heritage … Penny was just astounded that there was such an intellectual cadre in the US.
Yes all that she and her husband knew about America was what they saw in Euro and Brit media.
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I think that a lot of people get ideas stuck in their heads about how things were when they were younger, and just assume that they are the same way years, or decades, later. Actually looking at recent data confounds “what they know to be true” to the point that all they have left is copium. There are many places that were once near parity that no longer are (Canada and the UK), especially after the covidiocy from the first half of this decade. Other places that were downtrodden made strong attempts to pull themselves out of it to varying degrees of success (Poland comes to mind). And then there’s South Africa that determined that everyone should be poor, starving, and living in huts without electricity, reaching for that Zimbabwe glory.
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I’m not sure about Europe being salvagable (I am always hopeful, however), but from the sudden pop of Japanese-American exchanges on X when they instituted universal translation of posts, I am feeling hopeful for Japan. Maybe a Japan-America cultural alliance can convince each other to dodge a population implosion.
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In fairness, I have started talking as if a work of fiction, (The Circle Trigon Party and the Aggressor Nation), were actual literal truth.
Look, the Aggressor Nation had adopted Esperanto as its official language in order to erase the previous cultures of Europe.
It is absurd and hilarious how what the US Army threw together sixtyish or seventyish years ago as “let’s pretend” holds together. They filed the serial numbers off of the NSDAP, and said ‘train to fight these guys’, and accidentally came up with something that makes any sense at all outside of that context.
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