10 Things Most Americans Don?t Know About America

[Smithburg]

That's more or less the experience I had when I went to the states a few years ago to stay with my aunt and uncle for a month. what really got to me was the degree that people relied on authority figures to sort out their problems rather than doing something about it themselves. I come from New Zealand, and over here swearing is something that happens naturally without thinking, much like Aussie, and while I was over there kids would go and tell their parents every time I 'said a bad word' who would then tell me off... (who the hell are you to tell me what to do).
that and how grey it was over there. everything was grey. even the sky, even out in the country, or 10000ft in the air. when I got home I was overwhelmed with how much colour there was, even in the heart of our largest city there was flowers and trees and grass.

Where were you? Usually I end up hearing the kids as the ones swearing lol. And it's pretty colorful here. Were you way up north?

 

[Shia-Neko-Chan]

Can we please not reinforce such annoying generalizations?

This was a pretty hard read.

edit: It gets worse every time I try to read all the way through it.

 

[Smithburg]

Why even make this post though? All these ever do is turn into country bashing. It gets a little old. Why can't we ever make a post praising the accomplishments of other countries rather than these "This country doesn't know/is doing/cant etc"?

 

[Zeckt]

The one thing I dislike about the US is that they do not jail people to help them, they do it to punish them. Rape is almost expected to be part of the sentance which emotionally traumatizes and degrades the victim. That is disgusting they let it happen so widespread and not care. Especially with the privately owned prison system that makes money off of having inmates and ruining their lives by jailing them for 3-10 years for having a tiny bit of pot. It's slavery hidden behind the prison system.

Seriously, 3-10 years for simple possession? it pretty much boils down to ruining the lives of their own countrymen for profit. There's too many people in american jails with overly harsh sentances like possession. I think thats awful they are willing to ruin their own countryman's lives over trivial things all in the name of privately owned prisons by punishing them rather then rehabilitating the good ones.

"Yeah, so your addicted to drugs and your life is a mess and it could all be changed if someone actually helped you? too bad, your beyond redemption. Now go to jail and be somebody's ***** for years on end unless you develop an animal like survival instinct which will ruin any chance of you ever being productive ever again you worthless drug addict. Hurry up with those license plates and eat your shit food so we can make money off of your misery."

Oh and I 100% agree with the fake affection thing. Seriously, people who ask how your doing and are visibly annoyed when you respond need to stop living their fake lives. A thinly veiled jerk is still a jerk, learn to accept it and stop fooling yourself.

EDIT : I think I got a tad carried away with this post. I have no problems with American people in any way I just do not agree with their criminal system and am overly sensitive and hate it when people are being fake with me to be "polite." It hurts my feelings. Thats not an American thing.

 

[Perryman93]

I do no know, a single Englishman who is impressed by America or Americans.

 

[F'Angus]

Wow, must've taken a long time to write. Awesome read that.

 

[RJ 17]

Seems to me that that list is just one persons opinions on Americans, and hardly a list of 10 things Americans don't know about themselves.

Hell, the first two don't really even apply to things that Americans don't know about themselves, they'd be things that Americans don't know about the rest of the world. The 3rd one specifically IS that Americans don't know about the rest of the world.

It's as though the person who wrote this list came up with it by simply watching various 24 hour news channels for a week straight and formulated his/her opinions based upon that.

 

[DJjaffacake]

"Knows nothing about the rest of the world". Generalizations of the greatest type. Pretty much all this article has been, to be honest. (And for your info, Russia barely stepped foot in any of German occupied territory. They pretty much just defended the homeland. I don't mean to belittle anyone else's part in the war, but the US was behind nearly every major counter offensive).

The Battle of Berlin [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin] begs to differ, I'm afraid.

 

[mrhappy1489]

that was really really interesting

and its funny because I'm Australian and TBH I actually would be kind of facinated if I met an American

Yet your avatar is a New Zealand dog, you want an All Blacks jersey with that you kiwi sympathiser.

 

[mrhappy1489]

those exceptions are called English and Australian people. Whoopdie-fucking-doo.

Australians are not really that impressed by Americans either, so don't flatter yourself with that belief

I'm going to agree with you there, I've met a fair few yanks in my travels around Uni and I've not taken to them so much. Most of them are your standard kind of people, differentiated by and accent and different place of birth.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

You're right, the 10+ years of medical/surgical training I do after undergrad shouldn't be reimbursed at all. You provide a compelling alternative...?

Yes, a doctors education is very expensive, long, and will probably put someone in the red for years after it's all done (unless your parents are rich as hell and pay for your education, or you're like that nine year old kid who already was successfully performing surgeries). Also, your education never really ends, and you have to continuously keep up with all the new information. Not just so you can continue practicing in the medical fields, but so you don't use outdated techniques that are not as effective as new ones/that are more dangerous.

That said, from a patient's perspective it does seem a bit stupid that to get a leg fixed I have to pay with one of my arms. Don't get me wrong. Doctors get financially f@#ked too by the whole deal, but surely there must be a middle way in all this.

If medical services cost less the hospital would make less on each patient, but because of the lower cost wouldn't they see more business? And to help doctors themselves out couldn't we try by making education less expensive so they won't need to charge such high prices just so they can live while trying to slowly pay off their school loans?

Yes, just bringing up the problem and saying, "If we do Y we won't have to worry about X", but if keep the problem fresh in peoples minds and keep people talking about it we increase that chance of finding a solution. That's not just optimism, (I am a positive pessimist myself), that is just statistics, and logic. All that said, it is a possibility that there is no solution, and we're all just screwed. But I don't think that's the case, not yet.

Volume isn't our problem - in the u.s. the are, for almost every specialty, too few physicians. It is possible that volume could help, but then you open another, dirty door with quality of care issues.

Here's an example of what you're talking about - you have one gastroenterologist, 2-3 ORs. You can set it up so that one doc, soon as he puts down his scope he can walk into the next room and start another endoscopy/colonoscopy and churn through 40-50 procedures a day. It makes it so the studies are generally sloppy, because you have to pump through the patients. It makes it so clinic days you spend even less time per patient, but you make a killing in billing...is that the kind of system you'd like to see? One where there is even more incentive placed on procedural turn over, and not quality of care? I realize this isn't offering a good alternative, but to be frank, I don't know what one could be. It costs a lot to train us.

Sure, lowering the cost of our education would help a ton, but then again, the way of maximizing our earning potential rests in procedural turn over - you can't bill effectively for counseling and patient education - even though these things can significantly alter a patients life in the same way removing a gallbladder can...I guess the only difference is a gallbladder pays better....

You make some real good points. Also, if I in any way gave you the idea that I think it will be easy or quick to fix this problem I apologise. Believe me, I know this issue is far from simple. I don't think that switching to another area's plan will fix us out right either. It may be more than likely that even with all our current resources we might be unable to solve this. At least not right now, but I do think it is only a matter of time before we find a way. I mean hell, like I said earlier this week, if you went back a certain number of years and tried to convince people that, for some patients with particular problems it was possible to improve their quality of life by removing half their brain, not only would people not believe you, but you would probably be all but banned from being a doctor.

So hopefully all we need is time, and some more thought. Thanks for the insight. Also, that is one cool avatar.

 

[doomspore98]

If there was one point on that list thats true, I'm gonna say the paranoia factor. My grandma doesn't like me wearing hats because I might be mistaken for a gang member. A guy was arrested for taking a photo of a train and held by the police for more then an hour in a crowded subway system. Turns out, the reason he took the photo was so he could enter it in a contest held by the makers of the train. Even if this point is a generalization paranoia is a huge problem in the usa.

 

[Vault101]

that was really really interesting

and its funny because I'm Australian and TBH I actually would be kind of facinated if I met an American

Yet your avatar is a New Zealand dog, you want an All Blacks jersey with that you kiwi sympathiser.

never said I wasnt

so ner!

 

[Ryan Hughes]

if not for the allied attacks on western Europe, Stalin's defense-in-depth strategy would have failed when the Blitzkrieg took Moscow. After signing a non-aggression treaty with Hitler shortly after the invasion of Poland, Hitler's SS faked evidence of widespread dissent within the Russian Military, and allowed that "evidence" to be captured by the GRU. Stalin promptly decimated his own officer corps by executing the innocent people he suspected of being involved with dissension. This was all done as the Nazi had planned to invade Russia from the beginning, after they had finished with western Europe. And this is only one case of Stalin's ineptitude, I could go on.

just going to adres that point because it is so painfully wrong on so many levels that it makes my teeth hurt.

the attack on moscow was broken in late 41, long before any offensive allied undertakings. it's majorly agreed on by historians that after winter 42, so roughly 2 years before the allied invasion of normandy, the war was pretty much done and over. stalingrad and kursk had brought the decision long before any major allied attacks.
and even after that, the western front was tiny and near meaningles compared to the eastern one, dwarfed in both scale and relevance.

also the implication of hitler in the purgings is..speculative, at best.

of course, history tought today in america is pretty scewed against actual facts. teaching the reality of that russia did 90% of the heavy lifting didn't sound good in cold war classrooms, and that sentiment persists until today.

The implication of the Hitler purge is not speculative. It is from official OSS documents made public around the 1970s. See the book "A Man Called Intrepid" by William Stevenson, the official historian of the US and Canadian OSS. Maybe you are the one screwed against actual facts.

The Attack on Moscow was broken for many reasons, including allied resistances in western Europe, funded and trained by the US and UK. Even before the US's major involvement FDR was essentially bypassing/violating the constitution by assisting rebel groups and supplying both the UK and Western European resistances.

My point being that without the distraction provided by the allied nations, Hitler likely would have won on the Russian Front is quite valid. Also, just because the western front of the war was smaller does not mean it was meaningless. You cannot count lives lost like a sports score to compare which side won. The real reason so many lives were lost in Russia compared to the western front is simple: the Geneva Convention. Western European nations had protections for captured soldiers. While Russia did not for its troops. Meaning that both the German and Russian troops fought to the last man in fear of being captured, while by the end of the war the Germans would surrender honorably to the first western patrol that they saw, as the Geneva Convention often demanded they be treated better in POW camps than they were being treated by their own government. While in Russia, the extreme bloodshed brought on by a lack of the Geneva Convention caused civilian atrocities to occur, raising the death count of the failed defense-in-depth strategy to unbelievable numbers.

 

[Nimzabaat]

-snip-

You're being awfully defensive for someone who claims the author is talking completely out of their ass.

You're making an awfully illogical argument for someone who wants to act superior. I mean seriously, that idiotic tone argument is good in kindergarten, but I imagine you're a bit older than that.

There's that defensive thing again Actually from all of your posts it's looking like you're taking this whole thing way too personally.

 

[Nimzabaat]

snip

Wow. That was an extremely hostile and long-winded way of saying that you agree with most of what was said and hang out with fairly intelligent people.

Simply saying "I didn't read your post" would have sufficed. I disagreed with a lot of what was said.

It's called denial, and it's okay. Well actually it's not okay, but it's the step before acceptance.

So in other words you have no argument for your position, you're just going to make stupid comments like that? Okay.

Hey, you started it!

EDIT: Well you tried shooting down a well written and mostly accurate post without any logic, reason or facts. Failed miserably. And then wrote a whole bunch of butt-hurt rebuttals that were basically one or two sentences of "I'm not reading what you say. Not understanding your point. But I think something negative may have been said and I don't like it!". And were called out on that several times.

 

[Navvan]

I am not entirely sold on the "most Americans" part of the article. There are certainly some Americans who fit/don't know about some of those categories. Probably even some Americans who fit/don't know about all of those categories. However I have a hard time believing that most Americans fit into many of those categories

Just for the fun of it a light response to each of the points. Note this is just going off of my experiences much like the person who wrote the article is going off theirs.

Spoiler: Response to 10 Things Most Americans Don't Know About America

1. Few people are impressed by us.

This one is somewhat true. Americans by an large are raised with the sense "We're the best country and only superpower in the world" mentality. Its thrown at us starting at the time of infancy. However I have never heard of someone genuinely trying to impress others by going "I'm an American".

2. Few people hate us.

The general perception I get is that a lot of people get annoyed by us from time to time when they regularly interact with our culture. However its fairly obvious we're going to take up little to none of a person's daily thoughts.

3. We know nothing about most of the world.

Now we're getting into something that we're told on a regular basis. I find it hard to believe that most Americans haven't come across the tidbit of knowledge that our country on average has a poor knowledge of geography and international affairs. In addition anyone who pays attention in history class should know about the French's involvement in the Revolutionary War, the Russian's role in WWII and so forth. However our educational system is extremely spotty so perhaps my fellow citizen's history class was of worse quality than mine.

4. We are poor at expressing gratitude and affection.

I suppose the point here is that most of the world's cultures are much more affectionate than ours and that we're actually outside the norm. From my experience most people know of other culture's "over affectionate behavior", but it is true that we see our level of public affection as normal. Every culture sees there level of public affection as normal though so that is not really a unique aspect of American culture.

5. The quality of life for the average American is not that great

This is one that from my experience is fairly accurate. Most people are shocked by the vacation time other countries get and their work practices. It is actually to the point that they're somewhat baffled by it.

6. The Rest Of The World Is Not A Slum-Ridden Shithole Compared To Us

I think this is a hit and miss. People I've encountered know there are parts of the world that are caught up and some that even succeed us in terms of "advancement". Europe as a whole is seen as equally advanced. Parts of Asia (Japan, Big Cities in China, and South Korea) are also seen that way. Australia is also seen as equally advanced, but filled with horrible abominations of nature that want nothing more than to kill us (see #7). Russia (and European nations that use to belong to the Soviet Union) are seen as industrialized, but somewhat behind in the times. South America and Africa however are seen as slums much like the article states.

7. We're Paranoid

You'd want me to believe that so you can stab me in the back when I let my guard down wouldn't you? I'm on to you Mr. Manson.

(I agree with what he wrote)

8. We're Status Obsessed and Seek attention

This is something that is true, but I think most people realize it. They just don't realize what is wrong with it.

9. We are very unhealthy.

Again true, but I think most Americans know this.

10. We mistake comfort for happiness.

I think this one is hard to address. The concept of happiness is debatable and thus to say someone is mistaking happiness for something else is a gross assumption. We do like to be comfortable though.

TL;DR: The article is hit and miss from my perspective as an American.

 

[Macemaster]

From sea to shining sea.

I see what you did there.

There are some things I'd agree with.

The guarded emotions are probably something we inherited from our British forefathers

Yep. I'm British and if a guy wandered up to me and said I was beautiful or something I would ask if he was making fun of me (before telling him to get his eyes tested ofc).

Just doesn't happen here either.

Should have gone to specsavers.