Utisz wrote: ↑Sun Jun 06, 2021 7:44 am
More questions!
What's your overall impression of what foreigners think of you? Or what has been the reaction you've gotten abroad? Or what's the biggest misconception (positive or negative) you think that foreigners have of you?
My abroad time is limited. Canadians I met seemed to like us. Italians I met were nice too, given the language differences, I assume they mostly liked our money. Anything more would be me projecting -- after the last few years I'd think the world would think we were daft, for example.
Is U.S. exceptionalism, in particular, a "real thing"? Do people really identify with the idea that the president is the "leader of the free world", or that the U.S. is generally the greatest country on earth? Or is it just something more romantic than brain-felt?
This is real and it's bugged the shit out of me for decades. Let me put it this way. I was raised religious and was taught at a young age that god created everything in 6 days just like it says in Genesis. Then I got older, grew a brain, and paid attention in biology. Did I chuck out the whole creationism like I did Santa Clause at age 4 or whatever? No, i wanted to hang onto it, so I didn't think too much of it, or did the whole, 'maybe a day of creation is really a long time' or 'maybe god just nudged shit around' etc. Mental gymnastics to justify bullshit fed into my central nervous system by somebody else at a tender age.
That's what everybody in the USA gets 24/7 with american exceptionalism. No President has the balls when giving a speech not to mention 'well fuck yea, we are the greatest nation... blah blah... when we put our mind to it... leader of the world...' It's just incessant. It's a given. The starting point of how we see ourselves. I don't know what fucker started it all, I suspect is was one founding father or another tooting his horn and all the backwood breeders (I'm talking 1800s and backwood breeders would be 90% of the population - and in 1800 we were exceptional in some ways) took up the refrain. And this exceptionalism just sticks in there and gets in the way of so much rational thought.
Another problem is, folks who break free from this bullshit tend to be slingshotted out of reality like a rocket getting a gravity assist as it rounds Jupiter. They overreact. Then you get - the US sucks totally, but those fuckers in Thailand do everything right! I.E., intellectuals assume a Dawkin-esque hostility to the US which isn't entirely justified IMO. It's small picture thinking.
Do folks really drive mobility scooters around large supermarkets? Like if you go to Walmart, what are the odds you bump into a morbidly obese person on an electric scooter? Never happens? Happens most times?
50% chance of happening where I live on any given visit. That's probably low. Sometimes they aren't fat but they often look pretty unhealthy, they just don't walk so good I guess. Late night infomercials (that could be a thread) often tout the scooter lifestyle for older people. Hurts to walk? Fuck that, get on a scooter. Never mind not walking enough might be what screwed your mobility in the first place.
There is a virtuous cycle at work here. Most affordable food in big stores is dog shit with a nice label on it, thanks to our decades old policy of promoting the shit out of growing corn (high fructose corn syrup in everything), soybeans (in everything), and preservatives. Eat a bunch of this shit and skip the exercise to watch the scooter commercials, your body goes sideways. But you DID watch the scooter commercial, so get your ass on it and drive around the store and put some more of the dogshit in your cart. Honestly, I see this as a failure of government for our crap basic food supply.
Aside from U.S. presidents and founding fathers, who are the most universally "admired" people in U.S. culture would you say?
To the go getter types, entrepeneurs, people who make money, start businesses in their garage -- it's a religion here for sure. I admire Elon Musk for being straight out of a sci-fi story. There are so many influencers and such admiration is surely fragmented. Sports heads have plenty of admiration fodder, for example -- many sports to choose from.