Europeans don't, maybe sometimes can't, understand the absolute crushing pressure and gaslighting that most Americans are put through to make us the way we are.
It's a decades long effort to turn most of the population into a money and power pump for a tiny elite class, all while grinding us into dust.
We're crazy and scared all the time, and have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world.
There's a reason dying of opiates seemed like a rational choice to a lot of people.
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
reshared this
Quinn Norton
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
reshared this
Neil E. Hodges, Kobi LaCroix and Becca reshared this.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •Cassandrich
in reply to Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE • • •usspacenut
in reply to Cassandrich • • •Experience
gisportal.ers.usda.govTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
in reply to Cassandrich • • •Quinn Norton
in reply to Cassandrich • • •ClaraBlackInk
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •Americans also often don't travel within our own country.
One of my current neighbors thinks she would need pepper spray to travel abroad and she's disinterested in traveling more than a state or two away from home. She's so extremely angry but the other neighbors are so sweet to her. The fear has her trapped in this small corner of life and the smallness of her life has her angry, resentful, and clingy.
Folks have ideas about the other states informed by tv and news.
ClaraBlackInk
in reply to ClaraBlackInk • • •The broader world is as foreign to many Americans as California is to Florida or Utah is to New York.
Its an important part of understanding and facing our challenges.
Most folks aren't so different but the belief that they are makes them coil up into tiny worlds and tiny lives, fearful of every possible source of joy and thus angry at every possible theft of joy that's within that tiny worldview.
The Doctor
in reply to ClaraBlackInk • • •cwicseolfor
in reply to The Doctor • • •The Doctor
in reply to cwicseolfor • • •@cwicseolfor @clarablackink I was told that I "was getting above my station and needed to learn a few lessons."
I told my relatives that it was a conference for work when I lived in DC and suddenly that was okay.
Jess👾
in reply to ClaraBlackInk • • •ina
in reply to Jess👾 • • •@JessTheUnstill
@clarablackink @quinn
i live in houston and it's always funny to hear texans talk about the east and west coasts as these terrible places while turning a blind eye to all the gun violence that happens here
Jess👾
in reply to ina • • •The Doctor
in reply to ClaraBlackInk • • •Kyle
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
reshared this
Neil E. Hodges reshared this.
Neil E. Hodges
in reply to Kyle • •like this
Simon St.Laurent, cwicseolfor, dibi58, moondog548, oheso, eestileib (she/hers) and misha like this.
reshared this
Cainmark Does Not Comply 🚲 and Neil E. Hodges reshared this.
eestileib (she/hers)
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •@tk @kyle_pegasus
Yup, first time doing full city living myself and clearly I was built for this all along.
I know there are plenty of people who like solitude, I'm just not one of em.
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
Kyle
in reply to eestileib (she/hers) • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
Neil E. Hodges reshared this.
🏳️⚧️PepperTheVixen🦯
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •reshared this
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder reshared this.
genehack
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •Quinn Norton
in reply to genehack • • •The Doctor
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •But we're so used to Americans telling us what badasses they are, and that they simply MUST endure hundreds of dead school kids to preserve "freedom", that we're kinda perplexed somebody hasn't just shot all the fascists and billionaires.
Like, we see the situation you're in, and sympathise, but we've endured decades of propaganda too.
And you haven't even bombed or invaded us.
We're pretty annoyed with you.
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
reshared this
Neil E. Hodges reshared this.
Nazo
in reply to WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮 • • •@NickSchwanck That's part of it though. We're brought up from early childhood on to act this way — that not doing so is bad even. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people believe it even at the same time as they go completely bankrupt and have to use the kids' college fund to pay for a single medical emergency, but in other words it's all part of the same trick.
People are raised to be ignorant and anything that tries to correct this is systematically destroyed.
Nazo
in reply to Nazo • • •@NickSchwanck I wish I could find an old cartoon I saw online once. It has two plants that are exactly the same in pots that are exactly the same and one says to the other "I'm so glad I was born in *this* pot and not *that* pot."
It took them a long time to get us to that point. Try not to hate the ignorant fools too much. They're fools, but it took a whole system to get them there.
WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
in reply to Nazo • • •I don't blame most Americans. They're subjected to a lot. But I'm still confused about why they submit.
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
Bebadefabo
in reply to WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮 • • •Convenience addiction
WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
in reply to Bebadefabo • • •Nazo
in reply to WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮 • • •@NickSchwanck It's very hard to put into words. We all grow up here in a system that continuously every single day all day for all our lives gaslights and lies to us, telling us evil is good and good is evil, hate is love and love is hate, etc etc. A whole Orwellian nightmare. We're taught from day one not to recognize or accept this system for what it is despite all the warnings (we're supposed to reject the warners as biased.)
As I said, it's a whole system.
WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
in reply to Nazo • • •Keep in mind that 75% of the television I grew up watching was American. Around thirty years ago I worked out that TV and Hollywood is pure propaganda. Hollywood has been making the same six films for forty years.
reshared this
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder reshared this.
WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
in reply to Nazo • • •Australians aren't far behind. I work blue collar with forty men. The shit I hear them say about migrants and the world. It's straight off the mainstream media.
This, two days ago. A Murdoch newspaper. It refers to Iranian soccer players seeking asylum in Australia.
Meanwhile, an Iranian man who was the hero of our first mass shooting since 1996, is facing deportation.
reshared this
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder reshared this.
Nazo
in reply to WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮 • • •@NickSchwanck The deadly dangerous power of mainstream media simply can't be understated can it? And, by the same token, a lot of social media as well. Facebook and now X are particularly dangerous for doing this same stuff to people.
Some of this comes down to human nature. If a person is saturated with this stuff and they've grown up taught not to think for themselves, then it tells them how to think and it works.
WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
in reply to Nazo • • •pixie
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •And although I wholeheartedly agree that it's not the general people's fault, that the system is design to be this way, I find it very concerning when even the so called cultural or intelectual "elite", that has access to information, that travels, that sees the world, so many times do so with this vision as if they are coming from the centre of things, from the standard, and everything else is periferic and deviation. And I came to see thing like this after working for years with us-americans.
So, although I do feel bad for the people there, I feel worse for my people, as the poor here, when the US elects a supremacist, actuality die from hunger (and drug abuse and crime caused by lack of resources, etc).
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
reshared this
Neil E. Hodges reshared this.
hazelnot :yell:
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •I... honestly don't even think Europe is much better than that, it varies by country but as a subcontinent we're pretty much only ever a few years away from the US with regards to how bad shit is politically
If anything I often feel Americans are more compassionate, less passive, more willing to fight for their and their communities' lives
In my part of the world at least people have given up and are just willing to roll over for anyone who comes in with a bit of power because hey, if you lick the boot maybe it won't kick you? (it invariably does)
Szabó Em, Enigma He-Art Director :shrimplant:
in reply to hazelnot :yell: • • •@hazelnot in my experience the average US citizen is either about as selfish as it gets or is too worn out to be able to actually be nice with regularity. What we project online or while abroad is almost nothing like I see day to day. We may have our moments (like the No Kings protests), but they're not even remotely common enough. I agree, Europe isn't too far off in terms of politics, but Europeans, on average (and there are exceptions, obviously), tend to actually get vacations, maternity leave, paternity leave, etc to actually rest. We don't and that lack of rest and constant anxiety is why we're some of the least empathetic people I've ever come across. We haven't given up...we don't even know there is a boot to lick in the first place.
I live in what is universally considered the most "progressive" and LGBTQA positive area of the US. The most hateful, spiteful, racist, bigoted people I've ever met were born and raised here. A lot of it has to do with our awful education system, being over worked (90 hour work weeks aren't rare here), some of the worst roads that we get packed into like sardines, not to mention generational trauma that gets loaded onto the next generation (god forbid you go to therapy like a "coward"). Americans are severely misunderstood, by even ourselves sometimes. And that's the problem. We can't take the time to chill out and have a conversation to break down those barriers.
Baloo Uriza
in reply to Szabó Em, Enigma He-Art Director :shrimplant: • • •@jadedtwin I'm still trying to work out No Kings demands. Calls to actions are cool but I can stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign without a goal asking for money without help.
@hazelnot @quinn
Florian 'floe' Echtler
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •DonCC
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •then,systematic dismantling of unions and shipping of blue collar and manufacturing jobs overseas by the investor class. then piss on you from above is sold as trickle down econ omics while social and educational programs get gutted...
Quinn Norton
Unknown parent • • •WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
Unknown parent • • •detached spork
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •I've been saying this forever; the defining characteristic of Americans for a while now has been fear.
It only dawned on me after a conversation between a bunch of photographers talking about equipment when shooting solo at night. Little old English ladies talking about tea flasks and 30 year old ex military in the USA talking about how many guns.
PallasRiot
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •I think it's not necessarily out of grasp for a lot of Europeans, it's just that they get fed a lot of US propaganda about the US too. But I think plenty of Europeans have a basic grasp of the circumstances of the average working person in the Russian Federation, and that's not totally dissimilar? Highly propagandized, living under a deeply militarized security state, with a shockingly low standard of living because of frayed social systems and a gut-shot civil society, leading to many people withdrawing from politics and widespread deaths of despair.
Europeans would get much closer to understanding the US if they think in those terms basically.
PallasRiot
in reply to PallasRiot • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
reshared this
Neil E. Hodges reshared this.
Jim Hubbell
in reply to PallasRiot • • •I haven't seen a policeman all day and don't expect to.