People who generalize as if the US is one government instead of one big inept government and then 50+ governments that have districts and counties and cities are aggravatingly ignorant and smug.
"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 ๐ค 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can appreciate that some states are better than others, in a similar manner to being able to appreciate that some EU countries are better than others. I've visited the USA and so I've seen first hand the good and the bad.
It doesn't change the fact that globally, you are represented by your federal government and not your local state ones. As an Australian I might expect a foreigner to know our Prime Minister but never a state premier.
From overseas we just see a lot of the insane shit. Politically, the whole world is interested your federal elections because that is what has a chance to affect us. I don't care who the governor of a state is really because they aren't going to be able to declare some insane war or fuck over or save entire countries.
Even when we see state x legalizes y or outlaws z it just blurs together from out here. Much easier to see your own state doing good things when you're inside it.
And yeah, USA doesn't get enough credit for craft beer!
That's kind of like saying "I thought the EU was a Union".
OP's point is that the federal government mainly exists to regulate interstate issues and foreign affairs, but what occurs within the confines of a single state isn't in the purview of their authority most of the time.
The US is really like the EU both in scale and differences between individual states. National laws are generally just high level and very broad, with the laws most people directly interact with being state, county, city, and other local levels.
The EU is more diverse than the US. There's literally a language barrier everywhere you go. E.g., a Hawaiian and a Texan are more alike than, say, a Finn is to a Cypriot.
Is there? No matter where I go in Europe, it doesn't seem to be a big issue to find English speakers. It feels like the urban parts are settling on a second language now that trade and travel borders have vanished.
If the EU sticks around for a generation, I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing European nations reflecting the same demographic oddities that you see in the US regarding age of residents.
Maybe the issue is just that you don't realize how much we hate each other? Like America is dysfunctionally divisive at this point, there would probably be some offense at the idea that the two are alike. Republican-led states definitely don't want to be compared to Democrat-led ones, and vice-versa. Maybe I just dunno how much you hate each other on the continent, but I'd bet a Finn would be nicer to a Cypriot than a Texan would be to a Hawaiian.
The US is really like the EU both in scale and differences between individual states
Bwahahahahhaha! No.
Americans always love to think this is true, but it's nowhere remotely true. The US has an actual federal government. The EU does not, all EU members are sovereign states.
Secondly, difference between individual states? Rofl-fucking-mao.
No your slight change in accent (not in dialect), and slightly different local delicacies are nowhere near comparable to Europe.
The US has a few hundred years of history and most come from the same dozen or less groups from Europe.
The difference between just the top of my country and the bottom of my country is larger than aany state differences in the US. Well, except for, idk, state laws. But language, customs, cuisine. The modern European states have formed all from several distinct groups. The modern nation-state only started being a thing a bit more than a century ago.
All modern European states are made up hundreds and hundreds of previous, hundreds of years old groups.
No offense, but the comparison is pretty ridiculous on most levels.
I'm talking about laws. Differences like being able to freely open carry in some states while others barely allow anyone to even possess a gun. Or how some states have universal state healthcare and other do not. Or how drugs are handled, with many states ignoring the federal prohibition.
Sure, we share a lot of language and a generic background identity of being 'American', but the legal differences are massively varied from state to state.
You're being very Eurocentric about who America is which is another classic smug and quasi-racist thing to do. You're ignoring that we have populations, heavier in some areas than others, of Native Americans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and other East/South-East Asian nations. Then there's South Asian, Pacific Island, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African, sub-Saharan African, and last but not least, Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. We have all those plus your so-called "several same" European countries, which is horseshit unless you're talking about the first 100 years before America was even created. Then we have the rest of Europe. The entire planet lives in America, literally every nation is represented here. Some more than others, of course. And there are dialects between states and counties as well as accents especially if you want to include ethnic dialects then we have countless amounts.
But how could you possibly know that? Could you even name all the states and why they suck or is that just... A little, you know... Feeling? A feeling imparted by too much news and Reddit and YouTube?
From outside the USA, what news I get is biased and more sensationalist than it should be for it be fair coverage.
For example, I get zero news about Vermont, Minnesota, I get lots of news about Texas, Florida, Alabama, etc.
My assumption is that the states I don't get any news about suck in exactly the same way my governments sucks... In ways that are unlikely to have serious global, or extra-judicial impact.
The USA is the single most important country in the world. No other country has as greater impact on the rest of the world (except maybe China, in select industrial or economic areas).
I care about what happens in the US, I care about its people, I care about how the US influences how other counties behave. I have no way to influence that though. I'm on the other side of the world.
No they simply come from the rest of the world where it doesnt really matter how u do what u do just that you do it.
This is an extrodinarilly american centered view of the world and failes to see the bigger picture that your fucked up system is just one piece in a bigger pie of global society.
You all fly the same flag its on you for being incapable of self organising. You might not think it but texas says just as much about u as a californian as california says about u. The rest of the world treats america as a monolith because to us from the outside thats all that really matters to us.
Okay but this massively discounts the fact that Texas and California might as well be two separate countries. You're doing the equivalent of equating Spain and Poland because they're both in the EU. Would you really expect Spanish citizens to self-organise and protest due to Poland's abortion ban? Would a Spaniard ever expect that protest to be effective?
But the europe is working on adding abortion to European Convention on Human Rights. Ie europe as a whole is self organising to effect such things as a whole. The people in spain can protest for that and expect some level of success. It would seem that europe as a whole can better self organise and take responsibility for their misguided members than the USA can of its states.
I think the way u see it is a coping mechanism so you dont have to take any responsibility for any of the bad shit that goes on in other states. You personally should feel responsible and guilty of the shit that your countries extremists are doing in government not just give up and put it in the not my state not my problem basket. Go to the friggin capital and protest to the federal government dont wash your hands of the mess and shift blame.
Hell the trumpians stormed the godamn capital to protest what they beleived in. You and your beleifs have simply given up and called it an issue with other states. You live in a godamn democracy you dont like how things are change them you as an individual have the "god given right" to complain to protest to run friggin propaganda campaigns to shout at every street corner go change the world dont just sit in ur cushy little state and blame other people for your countries failures.
I'm fed up fighting over which celebrity gets to play king every 4 years. I'd accept if the position were instead chosen at random (lottery) from the pool of all qualifying citizens.
When was the last time we had a president from the lower class?
I bet I say black lives matter, eat the rich, kill all billionaires, fuck the police, ACAB, hugs not bombs, no pity for the majority, and once or twice occupy. Def no not all men though. But I thought yes all men was poorly thought out.
If you want my pedigree of the things I believe from far left groups and ideologies and just things I might say at a rally you can't have it because you're a douche.
as someone who considers themselves left wing, you certainly fit into the right wing ideal of 'american exceptionalism', even going so far to generalise a whole part of the world.
racism usually isnt a tenent of the left, but i guess i just 'dont understand' how you guys do it over there :)
Given the diversity of 50+ states, find me one that values human life of fellow state members with centrally provided healthcare so they're not left to choose between bankruptcy or life, views education as a public good and access to it has a low barrier to access it, doesn't have for-profit prisons or has a network of public transport infrastructure that relies on a system of trains or trams?
My country had wars with it's neighbours from single digit centuries. Comparing differences in Europe to the US states is like comparing McDonald's differences with local cuisine refined over centuries.
With so many differences where can I find social values that are comfortable with pederasty as in ancient Greece?
Knowledge is almost free nowadays. Reading history of countries offers a fascinating perspective of how we got here. For better or worse, the US is pretty homogenous in its value system, religious beliefs, political beliefs and language.