“you don’t get it, the usa is a fascist country full of government propaganda, and our rights as women and queer people are constantly attacked!! you have no idea what that’s like!!” i’m hungarian 👍
the brave oppressed american says under a post literally written by people from other countries. you don’t have access to it? you don’t have access to the information by the foreigners you’re currently whining about because they’re being too mean to you? on the world wide web?
you’re not going to get put on a list and disappeared for the crime of knowing mexico has cities. like get some fucking perspective.
Getting informed or staying informed is a conscious choice, and I don’t think many people in North America (including mainly Canada in this since I live there) understand that.
In school we were spoon fed specific, curated information to make us think a certain way, and to venture outside of that narrow government approved box can be scary and weird, but rewarding. And then you’ll stop making stupid excuses for not knowing shit about the rest of the world around you.
“The United States Educational System is a propaganda machine first and a childhood trauma factory second, with learning useful information being a distant third if it comes up at all” and “For each thing ‘everyone knows’ by the time they are adults, every day there are, on average, ten thousand people in the US hearing about it for the first time” can both be true at the same time.
Signed, an American who knows that the schools and news channels are lying through their teeth via omission and manipulation as well as outright falsehood, but is too busy trying to STAY ALIVE to go on Wikipedia to double check literally every single topic that comes up in conversation.
what i want you to understand is that this is true of most other countries’ education systems too. we do not have the mythical good education system that teaches only the objective facts and imparts knowledge. again, i’m hungarian; our education system is chronically underfunded and loves propaganda. literally all news channels here are state-controlled propaganda, and i am not exaggerating. there are no opposition news on the tv, we have to get it online.
my problem is not really with the ignorance, i’m aware that no one is born with this knowledge. what i want is for americans to stop excusing their ignorance with justifications about these exclusively american problems that we can’t possibly understand. because we do, and it’s just more annoying american exceptionalism.
So I’m American and I have some thoughts (and if this is ignorant bullshit please tell me I’m always open to criticism). First off you’re right. We are absolutely ignorant and often think the world revolves around us. The idea of American exceptionalism is so deeply rooted in the way we think that we do say dumb shit as if no one else has the same problems as us. We often weaponize our ignorance or use it to justify shit.
I can think of a thousand reasons I can say right now that could be reasons for why we are like this. Whether that be the US being basically a continent or the lack of education in languages or the fact that we are living paycheck to paycheck. None of those really matter or really even count because, as you’ve said, none of these are an exclusively American thing.
Really it comes down to this idea that we are fed about American exceptionalism. The idea that America is the only one with freedom, the one that controls the rest of the world, the only country that innovates, has the best colleges, etc etc etc.
I think what you’re seeing rn with people going “oh my god our rights are being taken away there’s censorship! You don’t understand!” is because we are fed this idea of what America should be and and for the people with privilege (white, middle class, etc etc) they are being disillusioned. Our world view is collapsing. But because we have this idea of American exceptionalism and we’ve never taken the time to look outside of our country we think that we are the only ones this is happening to. That leads to the whining to people from other countries and saying they don’t understand.
And again. To be clear. This is in no way an excuse. People need to open up their fucking eyes and go seek out information. Learn a language. Read a foreign book. Literally anything. I think that if Americans did that and recognized the American exceptionalism and the fact that there’s an entire world of people that are experiencing the exact same thing that they do there could be community and commiseration with what’s happening to us as a whole.
