What's weirdest thing about American culture?
What's weirdest thing about American culture?
137 comments
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From my outside perspective, it's the pledge of allegiance.
Do you really have your kids stand up every morning and swear an oath to your flag? That's some real cult shit.
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And then berate them for thinking that the ideals espoused in that pledge are real in any way.
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Nothing could be more American than that pledge: it was something that was first propagated by a flag company that was trying to sell more flags.
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First thing that comes to mind for me is the huge number of people who are religious fanatics here, which is unusual for a Western country. This is also a big part of what led us to the fascist government we have today.
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I think you’ve kinda missed the lede - religious fanatics. We’ve got plenty of those. Other western countries have quite a few religious people, but they aren’t often in-your-face cross wearing, “I’m a Christian”, openly judgy Karens like they are here.
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I specified religious fanatics because they're the problem, not religious people in general.
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in Europe, someone tells me their are Christian or are wearing a cross, it's no big deal.
in the US, it's a massive red flag
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Look at the nutjobs that were the backbone of what became America. Basically a bunch of puritan nutjobs who didn't like how laissez faire England was becoming so they hopped on the boat to America so they could make their puritanical paradise.
Y'all are just noticing it now which is a failure of the education system. Then again we already know this.
Thoughts and prayers to America 🙏🏾
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Fuck you, Jerry Falwell. Fuck you.
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You’re right, they misspelled fuckheads.
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What am I gonna do about it?
Listen here you bastard: Nothing, that's what!
Oh wait, that's probably why they keep doing it.
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As a German I don't understand why the USA basically do have two political parties. I know there are technically other parties but they have no impact.
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- Because first past the post electoral systems always result in a 2 party system due to defensive voting.
- Because Americans didn't listen to George Washington, when during his farewell address he strongly cautioned against "alternate domination" of a 2 party system.
- Because Americans are woefully uneducated, dis-interested, and preoccupied.
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And because now that it's entrenched, the two parties will collude even past the death of the country to keep it that way
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There’s some structural reasons (the senate, primarily) that American politics will almost inevitably devolve into two parties.
If I could do one thing to fix American politics it would be to abolish the senate, which gives low population states an insanely unbalanced level of influence over national politics.
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Because first past the post electoral systems always result in a 2 party system due to defensive voting.
Nope. FPTP is the norm worldwide and two party systems very much the exception. Even in the US, it's only been the last third or so of the country's history that two have managed to become so all-conquering in spite of being so unrepresentative.
George Washington, when during his farewell address he strongly cautioned against "alternate domination" of a 2 party system.
Pretty sure he was very much against the concept of political parties in general, rather than having any preference as to how many.
But yeah, the two major parties HAVE pretty much embodied all his worries and more..
Because Americans are woefully uneducated, dis-interested, and preoccupied.
That's a big part of the problem, sure, but the issues of regulatory capture and the two parties themselves being in charge of how the entire system works (including the barriers to entry for everyone else) is MUCH more critical.
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Didn't Jackson warn about point 2 as well? Or was it Jefferson? Someone did, and it also went unheeded (or used as a blueprint.)
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Most countries have FPTP but manage to have many parties in their parliaments/congress/diet. And I don't think the US is any more disinterested than most countries.
The main difference is the US has an insane amount of money at the top level, to the extent that it's basically impossible to participate in national level politics without both (a) a few billionaires backing you, and (b) the rest of the billionaires not objecting too hard.
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It is actually 2 flavors of the same party. The USA is a one-party state, controlled by the capitalist party.
EDIT: lol you can downvote me while you decide whether you want to vote for the Israel-defending-capitalist-that-ran-on-"securing"-the-border or the other Israel-defending-capitalist-that-ran-on-"securing"-the-border 🤪
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two the two people who downvoted this person, it's true though. any two party system is a one party system where all government decisions are made long before we find out about them as the politicians form coalitions within their parties. the republicans didn't become MAGA in 2016. they became MAGA in 2014 and 2015. 2016 was just them announcing their coalition
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"Winner takes it all" makes it inherent to the system. They really really need to change that. But that is hard, when it keeps the only two relevant partys in power.
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Google "Gerrymandering". It'll all come together.
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We have first past the post voting, not ranked choice or star voting
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for me it's the whole "don't tread on me" and gun culture rhetoric. Americans seem to be "don't push me" but when they actually get pushed they're all "uWu please more daddy" it's odd.
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Yes, that whole thing went from defending guns in schools to nothing burger in a matter of seconds.
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Guns cannot defend you from Fox News.
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Not the weirdest, but I didn't realize this until it was pointed out.
The fascination with work, and how one's employment or career is tied to personal identity. It's a basic conversation starter, "What do you do for work?" Not "What do you enjoy doing?" or "Do you have any hobbies?" or "Where do you go to relax?" Nope.
What to you do for work.
It's a weird question that is tied up in judgement and classism. And it's so normal here
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I've found this only to be true in white collar professions. Hanging out with blue collar people, your job rarely comes up, but it's one of the first questions with white collar people.
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I grew up blue collar and am still a tradesman. I technically live in the Midwest, but lots of Appalachian people. Of course my social circles include a vast swathe of socio-economic levels so you might still be right.
I'll have to watch closer to see if there's a pattern
I'd say your definitely correct when it comes to people with "low skill" or high turnover type jobs. If they work at dollar general or McDicks they don't talk about work much. Also, there's no such thing as a low skill job, and we all know who was essential and who could stay home for a few months
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It's definitely true with blue collar workers in Alberta, or at least it was when I still socialized (guess when I stopped)
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Good god, yes. This is something I had to break myself from. It is so insidious and pervasive in our culture that I don’t think most of us realize it’s even a thing.
I’ve been to a lot of outdoor birthday parties this summer, and there are so many boring dads who I will hear strike up a conversation about what’s going on at work. I usually make sure to wander in the opposite direction.
And I like my job! But the “talk about work” is usually less about interesting projects or creations and more about what has been going on with that individual’s status. Like yeah Kevin I want you to do well at work and enjoy it, but if it’s all the same to you I’m going to go get chased by kids with squirt guns instead of pretending I care about how your manager is impressed by your team’s metrics.
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but if it’s all the same to you I’m going to go get chased by kids with squirt guns instead of pretending I care about how your manager is impressed by your team’s metrics.
kids sure know how to have fun. we have a lot to learn from them
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It is so insidious and pervasive in our culture
AmErIcAnS DoN't hAvE A CuLtUrE
lol j/k
Yeah pervasive is right. I'd rather talk about the campaign I'm running and what my players did in our last game, but it's taken a lot of retraining my brain to allow myself to talk about what is fun instead of what I'm "supposed" to do.
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MKULTA and COINTELPRO were pretty wild. Operation Northwoods as well. And the FBI basically admitted to assassinating Dr King. By the 1990s they learned to eliminate the paper trails, so probably no telling who actually knew what regarding 9/11 or the 20 trillion dollars that vanished into thin air during Iraq and Afghanistan
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don't forget the CONTA scandal, illegally financing violent drug cartels to flood black streets with drugs, to sell missiles to Iran and fill private prisons with black people for slave labour.
it sounds like made up BS.
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I've always maintained that we let 9/11 happen to drum up public support to spin up the war machine and further the conservative plot to take over the country. I don't think we orchestrated it, but I do think we knew and looked the other way.
We did it with Pearl Harbor, so it's 100% within the realm of possibility that we did it with 9/11.
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Operation Northwoods
One thing that's often missed about this in the hero-worship of JFK is that Kennedy's administration desperately wanted to intervene in Cuba militarily - just because Castro was a Communist - and they had been pressuring the CIA hard to find something to justify an invasion. This was the context in which the CIA finally said "well, we can't find anything, so how about we fake attacks on US citizens and blame it on Cuba?" It wasn't like the CIA came up with this plan on its own out of the blue and presented it to Kennedy for approval.
To their discredit, the CIA would certainly have done this happily if Kennedy had given the go-ahead, but he said "uh, that's a little too far."
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- Gun culture
- Making houses out of wood. To me, someone from a country where houses are made of brick, this is like living in a shed. Also, the USA is the hotspot of tornadoes, so it makes even less sense
- One of the richest countries in the world, and universal healthcare isn't a thing
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Making houses out of wood.
This is fine. Lumber was historically plentiful in North America, and lumber houses last just as long as stone or brick.
Lumber has several advantages over stone/concrete/brick:
- Less CO2 impact from construction activities. Concrete production is a huge contributor to atmospheric CO2.
- Greater sustainability in general. Concrete is approaching a global sand shortage, because most sand in the world doesn't have the right qualities to be included in concrete.
- Better energy efficiency and insulation properties. Brick homes need double walls in order to compete with the insulation properties of a wood framed house that naturally has voids that can be filled with insulation.
- Better resilience against seismic events and vibrations (including nearby construction). The west coast has frequent earthquakes, and complying with seismic building code with stone/masonry requires it to be reinforced with steel. The state of Utah, where trees and lumber are not as plentiful as most other parts of North America, and where seismic activity happens, has been replacing unreinforced masonry for 50+ years now.
- Easier repair. If a concrete foundation cracks, that's easier to contain and mitigate in a wood-framed house than a building with load-bearing concrete or masonry.
Some Northern European and North American builders are developing large scale timber buildings, including timber skyscrapers. The structural engineers and safety engineers have mostly figured out how to engineer those buildings to be safe against fire and tornadoes.
It's not inherently better or worse. It's just different.
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A brick home wouldn’t withstand a tornado either. Like if a tree hits a brick house it would do significant damage to the house. And most brick houses still have a timber roof under the roof tiles so even a small tornado could lift the roof off the house.
Here is a brick house hit by a small tornado in England
Reinforced concrete is a much better material for a hurricane and tornado resistant building. Also shape of the house is important. A dome would be the best.
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A wood-framed house isn't necessarily weaker than a brick house.
Wood is pliable and doesn't suddenly crumble and collapse when it's stressed. And it weighs WAY less when it does fail.
If you're in a tornado or earthquake, would you rather be trapped beneath 120 pounds of sheetrock, insulation, and shingles or a 2 tons of broken, jagged rock?
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I've heard ICF (insulated concrete foam) construction is pretty durable.
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Living here, I will tell you that the insistence on building houses in a neo-colonial style in tornado alley, hurricane prone areas, or in a middle of a yearly flood plane, baffles me. We should have completely different architectural styles adpated to withstand the elements at this point. You know, what housing is supposed to be for in the first place? /rant
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Yeah, as I live in a very geologically active area, I'd rather not be crushed by 3 tons of brick falling in on me from the slightest earthquake. I'll take my wobbly wooden house.
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Houses of woods aren't really bad or the problem, but houses of wood that are held together by osb and cardboard is odd.
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Traditional Dutch houses (the ones on the canals) are wooden frames with a brick facade. The brick is fastened to the wooden beams with elaborate wrought iron wall anchors.
Most new construction is reinforced concrete, but those suckers have been standing for 400 years.
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Brick houses aren't going to survive a tornado any better than wood ones. Hell, the really big ones will pull the top off of storm shelters. Wood houses are used because they're cheaper to build. So it's easier to rebuild after a disaster.
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World Champions in sports that only the US participates in. I am not a fan of football, both the "footy" version or the "NFL" but it's always been odd to me that winners of the Super Bowl, or equivalent event, are often declared "World Champions" of their own league in an event exclusively hosted in the US.
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The apparent obsession with money. Some people claim to be religious but it's clear the Almighty Dollar is their God. I know we make jokes about needing a "profit motive", but there is a grounding in reality. It's truly bizarre, from an outside perspective, just what lengths and depths people will sink to in order to increase profit. I'm not saying this is an American Only thing, but it's VERY apparent in the USA just how far people will go.
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Where I live almost everyone assumes you are a right wing Christian. They don't even take into consideration that you're not and if they figure out you aren't they stop talking to you in most cases. I've never had anyone straight up call me an idiot but I've had good friends freeze up when they found out and then start avoiding me afterwards. You get looked at like a lizard in human skin.
To add to this, I've heard the talk that gets passed around before they found out that I wasnt. If you are a woman they will straught up call you a witch
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I’m a passing trans guy, and where I live is like this.
It’s just fucked walking around and know that if they knew, I would essentially lose all humanity to them. It happened with my divorce lawyer, it happens with doctors. I’m like an alien hiding in the place I was born.
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That is so strange. Where i live if someone under the age of 70 tells you that they are actual christian, the reaction is usually: "wait what? Really now?
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You live in a more honest place. It really is like this outside cities in large parts of USA.
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Christianity (and all religions imo) are a fucking stain on humanity, they bring so much more harm than good upon us.
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...christians are so overwhelmingly evil that i constantly have to stop and remind myself that some tiny minority of all the crosses and flags i see brandished about may actually be fostered in good faith, lest i judge too soon...
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TN
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...You think Appalachia isn't right-wing christian?
It's called Pennsyltucky for a reason.
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Flags. Americans are obsessed with the American flag.
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all their culture about being lovable good guys who do a goof and like their music
IRL they are the most joyless, dispassionate people who inflict nothing but misery on the world and each other
i say dispassionate but they do love
- caging people
- abandoning their sick and elderly
- poisoning their own children
- bombing hospitals
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Yes and I'm sure you're exactly the same as the worst people in your country.
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The real crazy part is the elderly voted to be abandoned
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Crabs in a bucket
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Are there no powerful, evil people where you live?
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Nothing but facts
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That we dont want to be trailer trash, but a good 95 percent of us are.
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Excuse you
I'm a double-wide recyclable
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That they live in the 18th century with 21st century things. Religious fanatics all referring to the devil in him and Jesus saved him - separation of church and state but there's references to god everywhere and politicians don't get elected until they're reciting lumps of the Bible in every speech.
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Sure, but just because some conspiracies are true, does not mean all of them are.
The vast majority are false and will never get a declassified file.
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The point was that no one cares to hold the horrific shit accountable.
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That.... Wasn't the point at all?
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CIA needs to be abolished, and everyone in the CIA who did anything illegal or incredibly unethical needs to be prosecuted for it (if they did illegal stuff in allied nations then extradited).
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Unfortunately, running on this as a campaign promise would get you killed. What you need to do is promise amnesty on the grounds of "healing the nation" and then revoke that amnesty once you're in power. As Sun Tzu wrote, never surround your enemy on all four sides.
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yhea, if the CIA doesn't want you dead, are you really doing anything with your life?
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That it spreads globally even though everybody else looks down on it and calls Americans dumb. It makes sense considering that it's the most consumer oriented but it's still weird.
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American exceptionalism, especially lately.
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And then get weirdly surprised and entitled about it when someone does do something about it.
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that they have no culture
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They do have culture: it's poor taste.
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....better to never surface hard truths. Ought to keep them buried like authoritarian regines. /s
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For me, it’s the American belief that their laws apply in other sovereign countries. Calling Julian Assange a traitor when he’s Australian and never held American citizenship for example. Demanding his extradition and strong-arming other countries when he’s not beholden to American laws nor constitution as a non-citizen, and believing that it’s their right to do so.
And that’s from speaking with countless American who believe that this is totally justified and above-board.
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Flag heilling
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As opposed to the rest of the world, where we simply never release a thing, at all.
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Statutes of limitations rule.
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We'd rather have lots of things to whine about on the Internet so long as we don't throw their vote away. Same shit. Every time.
Well. That sucked. Let's do it again!
137 comments
I notice American's habitually cannot mind their own business.