Interesting post.
I'll come straight out and say if I'm about to meet someone new who I'm told is American, I'll be bracing myself.
Sure, I know that the media can choose to show us only a certain perspective in order to skew our views. I also believe that there's some really decent folk out there. Then again, I also know someone who left the country because of Trump... The last time around.
However. From what I experience via profile - to - profile contact with people via social media... Its really not pretty. I'm on a few specialist interest pages mostly engineering related with users from all over the World and of course people have differing viewpoints - they disagree. This is normal. However, if an argument descends into "what the hell would you know, what is your tinpot country known in greatness for" then the user posting this WILL be an American. If I see someone from a smaller nation showing a really clever or novel way of overcoming a problem then the person mocking them with "that's a dumbass way of doing it" will always be an American. They're not interested in that the other user might not have access to the correct (often extremely expensive) tools - they just want to belittle and can't think beyond the way that they've always overcome that challenge. I might see a young lad from a developing nation put up a proud post of his first lathe, operating on a dirt floor from beneath a tin roof with chickens around his feet. Yes, of course it's a worn-out knackered old thing that would be considered scrap in a Western nation. But he's proud of what he has, that he's learning a trade and is performing useful work. There will be many encouraging comments but again, the put-downs will always come from an American. Others may intervene in the lad's defence but.... "Don't tell me what to think. I'm from the nation which put a man on the moon"
Considering that Murica is supposedly a developed nation, what's with the staggering number of construction site fatalities, crane collapses, and the frankly Third World number of train crashes particularly at level crossings? That many communities are drinking heavily polluted water, people don't have access to decent healthcare and that anything resembling a helping hand from the State is immediately branded as dangerous communism? What about the general level of education and that many Americans believe that any invention of any significance always stems from their own nation, not anywhere else? The brainwashing is what you'd expect to be Soviet.
Yes, I am sure that there's a ton of decent, kind, rational thinking folk out there - but the voices which reach me most aren't from those people. For these reasons, I'm bracing myself until proven wrong. Let the decent folk of America rise up against the horrifying events we're currently hearing about.
