It happened when I was kid growing up in another country, as a US citizen, and then coming to the US to see for myself why I had heard so much trash talk about Americans.
We are arrogant, spoiled, dumb and racist. The world expects us to be better. We are privileged like a spoiled rich brat and are waisting our fortune. We have what other countries do not and yet still ignore our own poor. We openly shit on our own minorities and immigrants that want to come here and build with us.
Even dirt poor countries have free healthcare and education. Our education system has been ignored and allowed to fall farther and farther behind the entire world.I came here in when I was in the 6th grade and immediately was shocked that kids my age could barely read. This is richest country on the entire planet, ever! Multiple choice? You mean they give you the answer and just mix it in with wrong answers!?
Our celebrated values that we put forward in our popular media (how the world learns about us by the way) do not include humility or compassion, it’s all direct or veiled celebrations of military might. Every hero is fighting. Guns guns guns, fight fight fight. Our military power allows us to do nearly whatever we want and we do.
Every disparaging comment I heard or that was aimed at me for being American I learned to be true. They are tired of our bullshit. The world doesn’t hate us, they are deeply disappointed in us. Several generations of disappointment.
Thank you for sharing this, it puts my feelings there well. I don’t hate America. I’m disappointed in it too. We used to do great things, but we’ve had generations who have squandered that, and here we are.
Yes, but I would also say that an entire generation isn’t responsible for everything. It’s usually a few very powerful people in that generation that get an the influence.
Rich people need political cover and boomers gave it to them at expense of every body else.
When I was living in Japan and felt more “free” than in the US. “Land of the free” is such a load of shit.
When I moved out of my parents house and stopped watching fox news.
I figured out pretty quickly that there were really big differences between Fox,NBC and CNN, at that point I saw CNN as being approximately truthful.
A couple years later one of the guys that worked with had CNN lies bumper stickers. I thought BS, but realized I really should see what it was about.
I looked into that. And found that he wasn’t wrong but it was way more complicated than that.
I realized that even the news channels with the most journalistic integrity still have numbers to make. If I’m not riled up they consider me under-consuming. And there were still agendas here and there.
In the Netherlands we had (and as far as I know, still have) state sponsored news and they are by law obliged to be truthful and neutral. I always found it to be a very trustworthy source, and I think this is something that other countries should do too. It had no numbers to make, they got paid no matter what, so they simply made the news, they were journalists. 10/10 would recommend
We had fairness in reporting laws until Reagan came through and nixed it.
That type of thing makes it better, but the bias still comes through in reporting choices. The right wing side always reports every piece of doom and gloom in the cities so they can make the case that the entire left-wing side is backing lawlessness.
Hell even if you take journalism out of it, every other neighborhood on social media will report that there are bands of roving kids running around thieving and fighting. Come to find out it’s a bunch of high schoolers getting together in summer at a carnival. I mean, we even have gang activity here and there but they hardly report on it.
Put those laws back, then. Right now the most accurate news source I can find is the daily show, which is a Comedy show. Jon is hilarious for sure, but how the hell is it that a comedy show does better?
Require news shows to be factual or they can’t call themselves news.
Its kinda hard to ignore the healthcare problem. That always stank of corruption.
Growing up in western Washington does it to you automatically. No one I know has ever felt that way.
I suppose it was after I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. That, plus my own personal struggles and being homeless despite working my ass off (and all of the issues that spawned from that), made it pretty apparent that life here wasn’t as easy and great as I was raised to believe. I still love everything this country claims to be, and I appreciate how people can be upwardly mobile, and how refuges can come here and create a better life for themselves, but I definitely recognize the areas where we need to be a lot better.
I’m not American, but I grew up there. I knew the US was a little off when I realized it was over-the-top religious which spilled over into politics. I had this idea that whatever country was the most progressive and secular would naturally gravitate towards good policies. I think my gut feeling was right. The best countries are indeed irreligious and don’t have entire communities that lose their minds over pop music that when played backward sounds like Satan speaking. That’s about when I discovered the liberal vs conservative dipole and how the Republicans try to dismantle everything good going for the country. Combo that with the low wages, the racism, the glass ceilings, over-policing, lack of public funding, lack of open public spaces*, and the injustice that I saw. I quickly realized the American dream was a mirage enjoyed by a select few and I left.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the US as my second home and wish it the best. But to call it #1 is crazy talk.
- Maybe it was the cities I was living in but I could not go out and spend $0 and sit at a plaza without being accused of loitering. I find that ridiculous for a first-world country.
whatever country was the most progressive and secular would naturally gravitate towards good policies
Sweden enters the chat
LOL the separation of NI and the rest of the the UK. Pretty accurate 😂.
Is Ireland missing from that map or am I not seeing it?
The reality started to crumble in 4th grade. I had a history book that covered the “main” wars for the US. Chapters on WWI and WWII had sizable “causes for conflict” and those sections for Vietnam and Korea were much much smaller.
9/11 was just a few years after that moment for me. Seeing people around me laughing at the thought of “revenge” by bombing other people endlessly was a major crack. Farenheit 911 was the absolute “we’re not the good guys” moment for me. My idea of patriotism shifted. I stopped believing that America was great, and started believing that America can be great, but it’s gonna take a lot of work, work that half of my fellow Americans are unwilling to do.
Since time immemorial,
Perspective from a mid-twenties American. I realized it was horseshit during the 2016 Trump election.
I was turning 18 just in time to vote in this election, and it was right around then that I started forming my own ideas about politics and what political “side” I stood on. Like a majority people with a semi-functioning brain, I thought Trump was an actual joke, a meme that had no chance at actually winning, like how we were acting when Kanye ran. Unironically, I thought that having trainwrecks of a leader was something that “other countries” did, obviously America wouldn’t let someone like this win because even though we make little mistakes here and there like Iraq and slavery we’re still the good guys and we wouldn’t actually let a moron like Trump become our president.
When it became obvious that he was more than a joke and an actual serious candidate with high potential to win, I realized that the only people consistently talking about how amazing America was at everything were the people voting for him, and I started dissecting the things I’d taken for granted.
You think slavery was a “little” mistake?
As an aside, my autocorrect wanted slavery to be Disney and I was a little tempted to let it stand.
Nah I don’t think they think slavery was little. They were just being “cheeky.” You can tell because of the big jump from Iraq to slavery. If they used immigration instead of Iraq I’d have a different opinion on their intention.
9/11. My first thought when watching TV that day was ‘Bush did this’. Now maybe he did or maybe he didn’t, but it’s clear as day the US was just itching pass the Patriot Act and go to war. Every year since then has shown me this country’s government couldn’t give a shit about poor and downtrodden people in other countries. In fact, the US is doing the trodding, and the poor of this country are also in its sights.
At least we still have social programs here, which is good thing, but it feels like something left over from when more people cared.
I really, really wish the US would get the f out of the Middle East, stop arming Israel and begin making reparations. Unfortunately, those of us wanting peace tend to be meek (up to a point), which isn’t a bad thing. Meek people can be strong enough to build a more stabile society, but a lot of unfortunate things are going to have to take place first.
An unironic “Bush did 9/11”, incredible
Lol, I know. I was just saying what I thought then. Nowadays I believe the US knew of a plot, but failed to act for the reasons I gave before. Never let a good crisis go to waste, and all that.
Younger millennial here: I don’t remember a particular moment, but it was somewhere during the 2nd Bush administration. Between the horrible things that happened in Guantanamo Bay, the completely unjustified war on Iraq, and the harm I saw No Child Left Behind inflicting on my own community, the country’s flaws were very apparent to me.
When an obvious charlatan got elected in 2016, that devastated my hope that things would improve.
A while before realizing that the anti American propaganda they feed us is also a lie.
Anything in particular?
Many popular and controversial ideologies. Propaganda has been massively successful thanks to the global web of misinformation.
That’s not very particular at all, what you’ve said there is infact, very non-specific, and generic.
I mean, just turn on the TV. Not worth spawning the trolls.
Sounds like you’re afraid your world view will be easily pushed aside as incorrect if you air it. A fear your ideology is deeply flawed.
People making claims then not willing to back it up.
I bet anti American means something like people demanding PTO and maternity leave lol
8th Grade. When I got access to the internet.
I was a teenager during 9/11, and watching nearly every adult in my life go absolutely stark raving mad from both fear and blood lust was a real wake up call for me, I can tell you that much. If you aren’t old enough to remember it there’s nothing recent I can really compare it to. 9/11 and the Iraq War are what really got Fox News off the ground, so just imagine living in Fox News land, because it was absolutely tapping into some primal response a lot of people had.
I was in my early 20s and it definitely was a moment when I realized things weren’t what they seemed. I also fell for the narrative for a bit. Then a couple years later when it was revealed that the WMDs in Iraq were made up it started to all make sense. This country operates the highest, most advanced form of propaganda and corruption. It’s how it stays in power.
I also believe this is what Israel is going through now. Leveraging primal blood lust to justify what being committed. No wonder the US is supportive.
With each passing week, there are more and more parallels to the aftermath of 9-11. Israel has now even had its own equivalent to the leaked photos of prisoners (held without trial) being degraded, tortured, and sexually assaulted at Abu Grahib.
It’s depressing watching history repeat itself within your own lifetime, even despite the far greater visibility of Israel’s war crimes thanks to the internet.
I had more or less the same experience. “Terrorists” were the villains in spy movies and they were NEVER in the USA. I thought we were invincible? Get a little older: oh look at the social services and infrastructure that other countries have for free.
… and how the us likes to bomb the shit of said infrastructure when it makes them money somehow.
I was a sophomore in high school, from a military (though pretty progressive) family. Both my grandfathers were sailors and my father went to West Point. I was in NJROTC and had every intention of going to Annapolis. I wanted to be an astronaut, so navy pilot seemed the path, and I would be making my family proud. I happened to be the one to put up the flag at school that morning. All of this is to say that I was very proud to be an American, and was looking forward to serving my country. The terror and confusion of that day hit me as hard as anyone else, but in the following weeks I was appalled to see how my fellow countrymen reacted. The way we reacted, with fear and hatred and overwhelming violence, both within and without, fundamentally changed how I saw my nation. I eventually dropped out of ROTC and started studying history and politics. I found punk music and took theater classes. I identified as social Democrat until the BLM riots of 2020, when I was radicalized. I now consider myself an anarchist.
