So I’m European and am aware that American culture is very different in many ways. Idk if this is just some type of thing about American culture and mentality in general that has always been there or if it is a trend that started recently in the past few years.
I don’t wanna generalize any country and know that not everyone is like this but I definitely noticed this type of pattern.
I increasingly noticed in the past years that many Americans are very hateful/cruel, are lacking empathy, become more and more aggressive and it seems like it’s becoming worse.
I’m not sure if this is maybe related to Americans needing to be “though” or something because I always hear about that the American mentality is pretty competitive and individualistic and instead of saying “we will go through this this together” they often have this mentality “it’s either me or you but it can’t be both who will win”. I mean I’m pretty sure that all these things like this biking culture, driving big “manly” pick up trucks, wrestling, football etc. are pretty prevalent in America compared to other countries and American culture generally seems very loud and direct. I think here in Europe people are way more reserved and I guess the strongest opposite to Americans are probably Japanese people. Maybe American culture is generally more “rough” where they aren’t super sensitive and don’t really care how their words come over and just speak their mind (maybe cause they value free speech so much).
But to me this seems to go to the point where many Americans seem to have this attitude and are very ignorant and arrogant and basically think they’re better than anyone else and they only care for themselves.
And it feels like it’s so extreme to the point where everyone is hating, attacking and bashing on everyone and instead of being stronger united they’re just fighting against themselves and putting each other down and they always focus on the negative.
Especially online it seems like that no matter what the topic is and independent from whether they are Democrat or Republican they’re constantly bashing on someone and baselessly calling them “weak” even though in reality they’re probably the ones who are weak and trample onto people cause they’re obviously dissatisfied with themselves and aren’t able to man-up to face the real issues. You just can’t blame everything on others and have to take responsibility for yourself!
Some stuff that I’ve seen on American news like “Fox News” just seemed crazy where the reporters personally attack and bash on people which is something that would be unthinkable in Europe.
Even though many people were saying that Americans have this “fake friendliness” I’m thinking that even that disappeared in the last few years and they’re becoming more open to show what they really think which seems to be that they “don’t give a f* about you”.
Many Americans that I encountered seem so aggressive like they always need to bash onto something in this toxic way even though they’re actually in a very good position and have a lot to be grateful for. Like in other poor countries people have real problems and are literally starving because they have no food or they have war in their country.
I’m always thinking “dude, you need to chill” cause literally no one is attacking them and they’re fully secure. But it seems like they’re always searching for a fight or something.
It seems like many of these people are so disconnected from nature and become less human and I wonder why they can’t just spend meaningful time with other people being positive and not constantly waste their time with hating or complaining about something. Because this just doesn’t work and in a society with multiple people especially in a world where everything is more connected than ever we need to hold together and have empathy for one and another. That is one of the core morals that a human needs!
It seems like many Americans generally have this “cruelness” about them cause I also heard things that many Americans are physically beating their children and even the fact that guns are popular and legal in America to the point where you can’t even safely walk alone in public during the night or safely send your kid to school and also this general mindset of America is doing everything the best and “America first”. I really don’t wanna bash on Americans at all and only want to share my experience because I just haven’t experienced this type of hate here in Europe in that extreme way and it just makes me very uncomfortable because I feel like this mood is affecting the whole world since American media and influence is prevalent everywhere.
To me it feels like this won’t end well and it feels like it’s just a matter of time until something very bad happens like the second civil war or so and the storm on the capitol might be nothing compared to that. But maybe that’s the only way they will finally learn if they’re lacking these core morals and integrity and they don’t get educated about that in school.
It also seems like they can’t handle critique and can’t admit it/stand to those things. When I once asked a similar question on Reddit the only thing I got back was bashing and personal attacks and I hope it’s not the same here, cause that is literally just proving my point. There needs to be constructive discussions.
It’s a deliberate push by the elites. They don’t want us cooperating, because that would lead to revolt. They fill our media with identity politics, fear and hatred so that we’re too bitter to work together. It works beautifully for them.
There are still a lot of us around these parts that strive to be kind and generous, it’s just that kindness and generosity doesn’t sell a lot of newspapers.
Those are the best people though and they should make the newspaper imo. Life is too short and valuable to deal with hate, we should embrace being kind to each other more. Nothing better than having a smile because some random stranger did something kind. That is what makes it worth living for me!
Coincidentally, I was on my bike the other day in just kind of a funk. And I was sitting there with a sourpuss mug thinking how no one ever smiles on the greenway anymore, particularly in bigger cities.
And then just like clockwork, as soon as I finished my thought, a guy who I never would have predicted looked over at me with a beaming bright smile. It changed my whole day.
40+ years ago the Republicans started a war against education and intellectualism. They won.
And it’s all at the direction of The Federalist Society. Reagan signed 2/3 of their Project 1985 into law, dramatically lowering the corporate and top personal tax brackets and removing the restrictions of local and national limits on network and local affiliate TV and radio ownership. Their lackey then spent decades creating enormous propoganda networks to pump the view that the wealthy are the best of us and should never be challenged. Plus, those networks constantly pump identity politics issues to polarize the popu Ace even more.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
- LBJ
Don’t believe everything you read or hear is what it amounts to. You’re getting highly selective, heavily filtered news, not the lives of actual people.
i only believe even numbered things i hear; so a full half of things I hear I don’t believe.
That’s odd
Thing 73012: Baby gorilla rescued from hold of Turkish Airlines plane ✅
Thing 73013: The deadliest beings on the planet: can the bacteriophage help in our fight against superbugs? ❌
Thing 73014: Taliban ‘do not see women as human’, says Malala in Pakistan ✅
Thing 73015: Zelenskyy offers Ukraine’s help to fight California wildfires after Trump Jr post ❌
Yeah, that was simple and fun.
fear leads to anger
anger leads to hate
(its not just the US, every human is like that)
hate leads to suffering
(as much pseudo-philosophical as Yoda is, here we really have to do something before it breaks so many people)
There’s war in Europe. Climate change is fucking up the world faster than we can respond, and America is burning to the ground physically and metaphorically as we speak.
Tensions are a bit high.
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Glad somebody mentioned this, American Individualism is taking the USA down
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You’re watching the collapse of an empire. The citizens are getting desperate and scared, those of them that don’t realize or understand the situation they’re in even moreso. What you’re seeing isn’t driven by malice, it’s just too difficult to care for others now. A lotta my friends struggle to pay rent every month and keep food in their mouths. We walk around with the knowledge a stranger could freak out and gun us down at any moment. Is it any wonder that they are numb to violence, numb to threats, even numb to the fear of death?
Once you get that numb and hollow, you cut what’s extraneous away and focus on your own survival. Americans are, broadly speaking, panicked animals. The worse things get, the more panicked and desperate they’ll become, and the less they’ll care about standards and morals in the pursuit of survival.
social media…
Can you BELIEVE rage bait gets likes?
Every part of our society is dysfunctional and declining, and that’s self-perpetuating. If you throw a rock, you’ll hit a reason why the US is like this. We are pretty FUBAR.
It’s pretty much always been this way, like if you look at opinions and rhetoric post-9/11, the overwhelming majority of people supported Bush and it was common to talk about nuking random countries in the Middle East. Back then we were a bit less mask off in that Bush wasn’t as blunt and explicit about things as Trump is, but the bodies were just as dead. Trump realized that the facade of politeness had become vestigal and didn’t actually matter. As for American liberals, the thing to understand is that they only compare themselves to Republicans and so as long as they are 5% more proper and 5% kinder, 5% more intellectual, etc, they see themselves as having all of those qualities, but from the outside, to someone who has reference points outside of American politics, the differences often seem pretty marginal. So for example, “I can excuse indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay, but I draw the line at torture” and within the context of American politics that’s reasonable and even left-leaning but in a broader context, it’s like, "You can excuse what?"
I apologize, I stopped reading about halfway through your post.
A lot of the call outs in this thread to delete your social media go outside and touch grass are spot on. You’re way too deep in social media and the 24hr news cycle.
I work in an industry that is very much conservative. Even the devoted MAGA people I meet are generally very nice if you speak with them outside of politics. A handful of the ones that seek out and want to talk politics (which is rare) are calm and I usually can get them to acknowledge the shortcomings of Trump when I start questioning the inconsistencies of his policies.
Our politics have grown courser and more extreme because of social media and the news cycle. The MAGA politicians of the Republican party take extreme positions to get attention. Moderation is ignored because it doesn’t grab headlines.
Yes Republican policies and very bad for our nation. But it doesn’t mean common citizens share those views. Usually it is much more nuanced.
You’re probably right on that one. Unfortunately I have too many insecurities to face the real world💀
2 reasons:
- first past the post system --> everything is good or bad, with me or against me, blue or red, black or white, …
- the initial lawlessness of the pilgrims just continued and permeated the culture
IMO, until USAmericans finally get rid of “winner takes all”, they won’t be able to change the attitude.
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Americans have always been hateful and destructive. We’ve just recently been given permission to do those things out loud, with impunity.
There are obviously multiple factors that go into this, but I think the big ones are the systematic destruction of the US educational system and the wealth inequality caused by late-stage capitalism. Fixing the education problem will take decades. Fixing the wealth inequality could be done quickly, but things will have to get worse before people begin to agree that it needs to happen. I’m confident that things will eventually get better. I am no longer confident that it will happen soon or without violence.
Similar things are happening in Europe, with the rise of the extreme right, but the situation there is not as far along as it is in the US. I think Europe still has a reasonable chance of avoiding the worst of this.
fixing the wealth inequality can happen quickly
no it can’t sadly, stuff like that takes time to process into law, and to obtain information on. The best way of doing that would likely be a wealth tax, but the second any actual traction hits (which is already a major barrier due to how lobby heavy everything in the states is torwards that stuff) any company that’s residing in the US is going to ding dong ditch to another country or migrate that wealth offshore to avoid the tax.
I think the best route would be either a significantly higher tax on money transfer over X amount yearly between the borders, but that would force company is just to go into how they used to do it before a digital was a thing where they just transport Cold Hard Cash or other physical entities over the borders and then we convert it back over once they’re domestic again.
or alternatively a higher business tax for companies overall, and said taxes are increased even further for a companies who are headquartering outside of the country, but this isn’t going to fix the wealth inequality, it’s just going to lessen the rate the wealthy gain their wealth.
The issue with all of these options though, is they all have the same fatal flaw, there’s no controls in place that would prevent the company from just offsetting the new taxes into their existing Goods pricing, we’re experiencing the same issue with the renters field. Price controls are inefficient and where applied don’t generally impact big buisness and instead tend to force the little guys out of the market as they lack the incentive and funding to keep in the market.
There’s the argument that well if they increase the price too far people will just stop buying it in favor of cheaper competitors, but that’s not the case for anything that’s deemed essential good, which would be most of the grocery sector, the housing sector and the utility sector.
Sure smaller competitors may eventually pop up, but that’s not something that will happen just at the snap of your finger that’s going to take years to do
The US got themselves into a super sticky situation by having years of lack of taxes and controls. They have created a problem that has no real good solution, and it will take some time to fix and it will likely hurt the consumer fixing it, but regardless something needs to be done.
As for the education sector, that’s a whole other issue on its own, while I think that is repairable it like you said is going to take years to accomplish, and the entire time that happens it’s going to be fighting an uphill battle because it’s hard to argue against if we cut the spending on the sector you save money, because many people can’t see past the short-term effects of a decision, making them blind to the overall longterm effects that gutting a public education system has.
This effect is exasperated by the fact that one of the two major parties heavily pushes the ideology that less knowledge is good, because statistically speaking the further educated you are, the more apt you are to lean torwards the other way, which is something that the party wouldn’t want.
I have to agree with you, it’s a roaring dumpster fire and without some pretty disruptive changes nothing is going to be done anytime soon. I’m not advocating violance but the people who say that it’s an easy fix, or can be flipped just by someone else taking command are sorely mistaken, this is a problem that is going to be existing for at /least/ the next 3 or 4 presidential terms at best, and that’s if it’s attacked head on now, which it won’t be as it isn’t the majorities concern at the moment, for some reason.
I don’t actually disagree with you. My point was that there is nothing that could be done to fix education quickly while it would be possible to fix wealth inequality overnight. That doesn’t mean I think there’s a chance of it happening any time soon.
Delete your social media, turn off the TV, go outside, talk with people. Is it hateful? No. You’re being lied to.
