Time to bash Americans again

After columbine my school banned all black clothing. And forbid boys picking up sticks in case we used them to pretend they where weapons.

I remember something about trench coats. Then those got banned.
Guns were never banned though!

A MAGA IMMIGRANT in Amsterdam? ewww, I wish we could close our borders to the likes of them.

Their Insta now says they've moved back to the States permanently. And also that their pronouns are they/them, which is super baffling next to "MAGA."
- They haven't figured out that the entire movement that's their entire personality hates people like them?
  That's hilariously sad!

I've seen security in European schools. Usually in the morning, due to congestion traffic concerns.

I like how Lily tells us she's not worth bothering with in her username.

You know what would be weird? A president of USA doing anything that trump's doing...

"Expat" is my favourite dog whistle. Because "migrant" is only used for brown people, or other undesirable minorities for racists.

She has "MAGA" in her display name. Why listen for dogwhistles when there's a red alert siren?
BTW I had several teachers that described themselves as expats from the UK or US, and they were alright.
From my own experience as an immigrant in The Netherlands and Britain, "expat" is generally used by Americans and Brits when living abroad and pretty much nobody else no matter what their skin tone. I mean, I've seen on or two Ozzies using it but it's way rarer with them and I suspect they were just copying the Brits and Americans. The New Zeelanders I crossed paths with weren't "expats" and neither were the Canadians. Similarly I never heard any of the other Europeans immigrants there refering to themselves as "expats".
I think "expat" is more a thing of people who thing they come from a "great country", as if somehow it's a priviledge for the other country to have them there.
- I think “expat” is more a thing of people who thing they come from a “great country”, as if somehow it’s a priviledge for the other country to have them there.
  This is it. If you move from a "better country" to a "worse country" you are an expat (because you think you are something better than the lower people you live among). If you move from a "worse country" to a "better country" you are labelled as a migrant (by the "better" people you live among).
- I would have said the two words are different by perspective. An "expat" is talking about where you're from. An "immigrant" is talking about where you are. Also, if you start talking about 2nd generation immigrants, then "expat" can't be used at all, which means it is narrower in scope, too.
There is technically a difference in the definition, but mostly people use it exactly as you're describing.
I've really had to catch myself when I notice myself using it.
But honestly it's so expected that people can get confused when you call yourself an immigrant (and you aren't doing it to make yourself a martyr somehow).
I hate the word for the reasons you've said, but I know a lot of black Americans in Portugal that refer to themselves as expats.
Feels to me that the line is drawn along economic privilege lines rather than simply race.
- "No war but the class war" strikes again
- There’s also this level of like, still identifying as being primarily of the country they’re from, like a rejection of assimilation into the place they’ve moved to. I’m not saying that’s inherently good or bad, but, it’s an interesting dynamic, and an option that a lot of immigrants don’t have.

Why would you move to the Netherlands if you are MAGA? Isn't your country so much greater again now? You ellected your king and then you left?

Gotta spread the freedumb
Well, the Dutch are moving right. Gert Wilders is a literal fascist.
AfD in Germany then we have Norway, Italy, Finland, UK, France and on and on. They probably feel at home
Well, if this wasn't a troll account, it would probably be for work. The US has a military presence in the Netherlands, and we have a lot of corporate cross-over, especially in the tech industry, like the photo lithography involved in making CPUs. It isn't that weird.
This is s troll though
Yeah this confuses me to no end. I thought they made America great last election?
- Trump made it great, but Biden and woke already made it so un-great that the greatness hasn’t all trickled down yet.
- Because they live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.
laughs in Dutch politics
- Cries in Dutch politics

This thread is Poe's Law-ing the shit out of me
No, no, no. These weapons pale in comparison to basic infantry in the modern military. Not only are they way overkill for anything a law abiding citizen should ever need for recreation, they would also be useless in the case of a 2nd Amendment related coup of the corrupt government.
- Are you saying an AR-15 can't take out an attack helicopter at 2000m??

Who the fuck emigrates to Europe as a hardcore American fascist? Seriously? What the actual fuck?

Spreading the plague, as insects are wont to do.
- As an American, I would like to apologize profusely for the rank idiocy of my fellow citizens.
We have plenty of fascists here. It's not like the US have a monopoly. We don't quite let them run the show yet, but we're certainly working on it.
- Yeah, but a really big part of the MAGA platform is hating on the "communist" and "woke" "yuropoors". She must really really hate it here.
- We have European fascists here. The point here is: why would an American fascist move to Amsterdam?
- The difference is that while we may have several fascists here, unlike in the US the majority are not fascists.
They come here to spread their culture, their ideology of violence and intolerance.
- As an American, please enthusiastically tell any American that tries to do this to fuck all the way off and go back to our own shitty country. I don’t want us fucking up your continent too.
- Europe has its own nest of fascists and they're gaining popularity.
I’m an American living in the EU, and I’m surprised by that. All the other American immigrants I’ve met so far have been opposed to Trump and Republicans generally. I always figured the conservatives were likely to be buying into AmErIcA iS tHe BeSt propaganda and would thus be uninterested in moving to another country.
Could be a military member stationed there. A guy I work with is one of those 4chan "libertarians" and had nothing but "horror stories" about living in Germany. Same guy is terrified to venture into the local major metropolitan area or take the light rail system.
- I'd love to hear more
Europeans invented fascism so she's just trying to learn from the best.
Maybe they needed the more affordable healthcare?
- We need that, and healthcare that isn’t tied to our jobs, because that significantly entrenches the whole wage slavery thing.
It's funny, the fascists "won" here, but they are still expatriating themselves to fuck up other people's countries too.
Maybe for a specific job? Booking.com used to heavily recruit US talent to work in Amsterdam. It was usually only for a few years at a time, though, in accordance with Dutch labor and immigration laws.
- Not for years and years. Most of the booking.com staff is remote. All the senior staff is outsourced now too and very little is in Amsterdam. If you get a job there, word to the wise, don't compliment the one lady's chickens, she gets big mad.
Imagine being racist and wanting to enjoy it instead of making it political. In the US it's culture war shit. In Europe you can go to a football match and throw bananas at the black players and it's chill. It's just easier to be casually racist in Europe because racism doesn't exist there, and if it does, it's not as bad as America.
- Recently in Spain a football fan got sentenced for racist chants
- In fairness nobody ever died from a stray banana.
Yeah, fuck off back to your own shit country if you don't like it

This was a troll account. It was a Dutch guy pretending to be MAGA to point out how arrogant Europeans are. He succeed thoroughly

Is it arrogance when you're just correct?
- When its all made up? Yes. Yes it is

As a Canadian, I would very much like some sort of barrier between my country and the United States. We've got our own brand of crazy up here and have absolutely no need to import any junk from the USA.

Build a wall, make the USA pay for it
(Kidding, mostly.)
As an American, I hope Canada gets some sort of barrier between it and the United States.
I would gladly go with my family and volunteer to help build it. If my family "accidentally" ends up on the Canadian side, I'd much rather stay though and help offset the crazy you have there....
- I mean if you are there putting the last bricks in and you are standing on the north side you really don't have much of a choice.

metal detectors and xray scanning of backpacks made me feel like I was going to prison lol

I can’t imagine going to school like that bro.
Like is it scary and you always wonder if some lunatic is going to come and shoot it up or no?
- I mean, I also worry about getting beat up by bullies... 🤷‍♂️ (its whatever, at least dying form gunshot wound is a cooler way to die than getting kicked in the face, luckily for me, neither happened (although the bullying definitely did happen, just not as violent as I imagine it could be))
- A lot of this is overblown really. A few things:
  The vast majority of school kids in the US will never deal with an active shooter situation.
  43% of school shooters in the US are themselves active students
  Only 20% of school shooting perpetrators had no affiliation to the school, meaning that ~37% of shooters were former students, teachers, or parents.
  From 1999 - 2023 there were a total of 131 school shootings, but in 2024 alone there were a reported 332 school shootings.
  These are some terrible numbers, but statistically it's a rare thing. There are approximately 130,000 K-12 schools in the US and ~75 million students per year. If we assume all schools have the same chance of having a school shooting (they don't) they would have a 0.2% chance that your school will have a shooting that year or 4% chance that in your k-12 years that you would be at a school shooting.
  When people talk about school security in the US they often don't consider how litigious and risk adverse the US is. You don't lock doors, build fences, and hire security guards to protect from such a small risk chance, if they actually cared there would be a greater emphasis on mental health. No, they do these things to minimize risk, lower insurance rates, and ward off lawsuits.
  The defense writes itself,
  "Hey, you can't sue us for your child's trauma, we did everything we reasonably could to ensure that a shooter couldn't get into the school. We built a fence, we locked the doors, we made the kids wear clear plastic book bags, we used a metal detector, we hired a guard, we expelled kids who made threats, and we called the police on people who aren't allowed to be here. If a kid then sneaks a 3D printed plastic gun on site and traumatizes the students it's not the school systems fault."
  The US is crazy litigious, especially if a government entity is involved and someone might get a pay day. In my area a high school girl and some similarly aged boys ran away from school while at recess to a forest a mile or two off site. The girl then said she was sexually assaulted by the two boys, called her mom and was picked up and taken to the hospital directly (never came back to the school). The school had reported the girl missing, but only found out about the sexual assault after the mother filed a police report and the police reached out. The school cooperated with the police and reached out to the girl and her mother asking if she was ok or there was anything they could do, but the mother refused to answer their (the schools) phone calls or cooperate with the police. A year later the mother sued the school, the school system, the municipal government, and the police each for several million dollars for allowing her daughter to run away from school and for not protecting her from sexual assault in an offsite location. This lawsuit went on for over a year before the judge dismissed the case.
I think the most security I ever had was the gates being locked between opening and closing times. This was during primary school. Britain sucks but at least it's not America.

Because we don't have regular mass shootings in schools because we don't give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show a gun and where we do, we legislate that they keep their gun in a gun safe. You know, like the rest of the world...or the USA in 1792.

It's not JUST the guns tbh. Everyone in Switzerland has a gun and they don't shoot eachother up. American society is fucked up on multiple different levels and the guns are just adding extra fuel and oxygen to a forest fire.
- Everyone in Switzerland has a gun and they don't shoot eachother up. American society is fucked up on multiple different levels
  Whenever i mention the Swiss having as many guns as the US, if not more, and yet the former has practically zero mass shooting incidents, and pointed out the problem of America is cultural, Americans tend to turn a blind eye to it.
- It's a dumb comparison, as their reason for owning guns is entirely different and tied to national defense, not self-defense and "freedom"
- And until our societal issues are solved, the guns need to go back into Pandora's box.
- In Switzerland most people give their state issued gun away when they are not serving. So almost nobody has a gun at home.
we don't give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show
Erm, wut?
- In America you can bypass gun checks in most checks if you buy your gun from a Gun show.

Gotta say, thats a pretty good burn.

And we don't have people walking around with guns (yet).

Europe has gangs and guns and whatnot. But people have more to lose I think. Something like that. Better education maybe?
Could be way better here as well
- Hardened criminals have access to firearms but they tend to be expensive and difficult enough to get a hold of that you don't waste them on holding up a 7-11.
  But angry children and adults who just want to hurt people generally don't.
  It is why gun control works. It isn't about getting rid of ALL guns. It is about reducing their number so that people don't realize a year later that five of their ar-15s are missing
- More chill, probably.
  Unchecked capitalism of this degree is a stressful world to live in and it drives people insane. Fear and hate not only breeds mass shooters, it makes your random Joe shoot PoCs, delivery guys or really everyone stepping on their lawn. And it's not racism or some other kind of hatred alone. It's a general fear that EVERYTHING entering your comfort zone is there to fuck you over. And in the US they aren't totally wrong, because many things we find normal in Europe, like affordable healthcare, insurance, education, etc - are traps constructed to drink you empty, not to say about how many real scams flourish there. They are in a fight or flight mode like 24/7, so it's no wonder they shoot on sight and cheer to bigotry.
  Meme/anecdote: many european listeners of Cool Zone Media podcasts were confused, while visiting US of how many advertisements to buy gold deposits were in automatic ads while there, and how agressive they were. In a sense, gold investments is a panic button you press when you gamble on everything else going down. And this particular scam, the popularity of crypto, and the power of rabid christian sects kinda says a lot about how secure regular folks feel.
  I've never been to the US, so it's all built on assumptions and hearsay.
- Every country have criminals and guns. The difference is how available they are to the general public. And what type of guns.
  Anyone in the US that isn't a convicted felon can buy a handgun as soon as they turn 21. And there are very few laws on how you're required to store them.
  Compared to Europe where it's incredibly rare for an average citizen to have access to a handgun.

Most British schools have bars to keep the kids in.

That's an exarregation, right?
- Yeah, a UK friend of mine mentioned that it is meant to prevent kids from playing hooky (ditch school). Meanwhile in Canada, we're free range children.
  It does probably depend on the school location.
- I don't think so. It is exactly like that in France.

I remember the exact day they closed up the college with fences and the look on the face on the children who started to feel like prisoners. I also remember the day they started to locked all doors but one to inconvenience potential invaders in high school forcing surveillance on who's coming and who going on grown teens.

Have you heard of "induced demand" courtesy of the FuckCars community?

Well, the same applies to violence.

If you have police on campus people subconsciously expect violence. It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. The more security theatre you add, the more actual security you'll need.

Normalizing shootings by giving them such media attention also doesn't help, if the prospective shooter craves it. Neither does the fact that it occupies a large part of the US public consciousness.

Some kids do it because others have already, and because school shootings are such a hot media topic.

Narrator: The problem wasn't the kids it was the US.

Clarification: venues getting shot up is a specifically elevated problem in the US (exacerbated by availability of guns, but that's not really the root of the problem). The thing is, the root of the problem (right-wing-leaning low-information constituents -- lumpenproletariat in left-wing speak -- suffering from precarity sometimes turn to violence) is being visited on European nations where two-party systems have taken root, and neoliberalism has set in. It's the old King Log vs. King Heron problem. We're seeing violence and counterviolence in the EU, just with less frequency and fewer guns, but it will catch up to them.

Shots fired

The truth hurts.

Edit: Oh, a downvote? Guess what, you played yourself. Now there are two. Don't worry about what happened to the planes.

I think the US military only attacks school when there students aren’t mainly white
- Or run by a democratically-elected leftist government.
- Or a school of fish... or a school boat
Did they fall off?
- A easy target without it's strike group.

They call themself an expat that's all I needed to hear

Again? When did everyone stop?

To be fair. We deserve all the smoke.

Yeah I see people online talk about how Europeans can supposedly only come up with one reason to criticize the US and it's just...
Not true at all there's a hundred reasons Europeans could criticize us
I can't think of a single criticism I've seen of the US that wasn't completely valid
Like yeah I guess you could argue the average citizen is well aware of the school shooting issue and knows the answer to the problem, but at the same time our last election really calls that perspective into question.
- Half the country is illiterate.

Why is this a picture of grass?

That's where the fence goes

If I must

my favorite time!