Why do some Americans "feel ashamed" for being American even when it's not their fault?

Because it collectively is our fault.

You don't have to be at fault to be ashamed.

I don't know about others but I imagine for a lot its just guilt by association. I've definitely been feeling it for a while.

I also think a lot of people feel bad about their tax money going into the pockets of so many evil people for so many evil purposes. One of the reasons I personally stopped paying taxes. I wish my fellow Americans would join me on that end, but it isnt easy.

I grew up in Indonesia, my sister is from Java, my brother is from Singapore. I'm natively from California, and I'm a huge white boy. I am ashamed that the country of the free, the country of the brave who had bounteous arms to welcome the downtrodden and abused of the world is no longer that place. Instead it's the land of the secret police, tbe land of a pedophile traitor president who can't stand any kind of criticism because he's a fucking coward who dodged military service.

in my own case, it's that I've (not intentionally but still) benefited from a system that subjugated others (natives, people of all colors, and women) to secure the national infrastructure I've directly profited from. Everything from education, clean water and housing, to medical care often shockingly focused on what ails and heals white males. And the sickening knowledge that the same ones who want to deport taxpaying workers who rarely benefit from the enormous amounts of money our country throws around are the same as me, living on land stolen from the people who lived here, who we basically exterminated. Finally, we use the trappings of a pseudo-democracy to declare all men are equal, but really, they mean wealthy heteronormative white men, because otherwise you're the other and disenfranchisement should be expected.

That's-just-the-way-it-is? only if you accept it.

Speaking only for myself: because the American government has, for 250 years, claimed to act on behalf of the American people. When it was liberating concentration camps and sending people to the moon, that was something to be proud of.* When it was upholding slavery and winking at Jim Crow laws, it wasn't.

It's a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," and so he purports to speak and act on my behalf. That's deeply embarrassing and shameful, even if I couldn't have done anything differently to prevent it.

(Yes, I know that even those "good" examples are complicated. I'm just forming an example here)

I don't have pride in my government or its actions.

It was actively causing a lot of harm for most of its existence and is now turbo charging its ability to enshittify the world.

The LEAST I can do is make it clear we're not all in support of this shit.

Love the country and people though. Lots of cool forests to roam and lots of people who don't suck.

Anyone who has been embarrassed by a family member knows.

I feel that way but because I’m human.

We are not good people.

I believe the shame stems from the moral injury we all suffer when we peacefully stand by in a democracy and let bad people control the government and inflict serious harm on innocents

So in some respect it is in fact all of our faults because we do in fact sit by and watch people die so we can respect the democratic process.

Because we live here enjoying the fruits of all the evil/bullshit/indifference without doing enough to prevent shit or change shit (probably underhandedly excusing people doing nothing about it)

The whole I'm not at fault thing is believing the big lie. "I didn't commit the crime myself so does standing here and watching it happen really make me morally responsible?" Yeah it absolutely does. Its reasonably easy to help and your just unwilling to inconvenience yourself morally, mentally or physically.

Simply EXISTING here enables the machine that makes all the evil happen, and we feel that. And, without you accepting that being ok yourself, that would change and we are aware of that. But taking yourself out of that requires not enjoying life as much as other people or "everyone else" as it is sometimes thought

So its because people feel like they are taking advantage of the situation with our cheap goods made by slave labor and easy lifestyles built on the backs of 10,000 poor people and we figure we shouldn't be doing that. Kinda morally reprehensible no matter the justification we sell ourselves you know?

So, the situation sucks and yeah, that makes some people feel bad about all that (if youre not an ostrich person burying your head in the sand so you don't have to feel ashamed that is)

Because I look at my country and what it's done and feel insufficient for my failure to keep it from doing stupid and evil things.

Also the European and Canadian frustration with America and Americans is understandable, but it has an impact especially when you still think highly of those places and their people.

I'm from the US but left to live outside it. I will NEVER FUCKING EVER call myself an American, much less a proud American. I'll call myself a NYer because I owe most of who I am to that state/city, but I am ashamed about the country I grew up in and absolutely do not want to be associated with it. The US government has only ever caused me and my people harm.

I haven't felt very patriotic or proud of my country in over 25 years, since I began to slowly understand politics and how things worked within my country. I feel that after everything I've read, everything I've heard about, everything I verified myself by researching and everything everyone has gone through in it with the bads. You can say my control stick has been snapped off and I'm permanently unpatriotic and ashamed to represent my country, knowing the damage that has been done internally as a country and externally everywhere else in the world.

I know it's not my fault, I just do what I can, I pay my taxes knowing it's being pissed away, I work jobs I didn't like doing to feel like I'm contributing despite it not being ultimately worth it because I am helping sustain the motion of this unworthy country. I have voted Sanders, Sanders, Harris in my voting record. And still, the assholes won in the end. But then I feel like, that shit doesn't matter because our track record as a country has shown that the system is in favor of said assholes if they're cunning enough to take advantage of them and that's what we've witnessed many times.

All the while knowing that half of the population in this country, is dead set in taking the rest of us down with them in every negative decision made. While still trying to tell us it is our fault.

One word:

Tribalism.

It’s shaming to see people and institutions you were proud of and bragged about being the best, then devolve into something the rest of the world laughs at.

My family settled here in 1630. I don't feel shame about being american, I feel dread at the resurrgence of barbaric population control as opposed to compassionate capitalism and universal basic income for all. My entire childhood and participation in civics was a temporary era not the foundation of a beautiful future.

I look at my children and want to apologize to them for what they'll endure after my demise. What a way to wake up...

Part of the social contract in America (at least... this is what I believed growing up here) is that we all kinda share in this thing we all have going. Like, let's say we get into a war. The government can (and does) ask citizens to join the military and fight and the reason that works is because we all kinda implicitly signed off on it. Yeah, sure, you had nothing to do with the country getting into a war. But because you participated in government, in the system, because we run this thing (nominally) by the standard of democracy and consent of the governed, everyone owns at least a small part of the responsibility for the country's actions. In the case of a war, that might look like joining the military and "doing your part". More commonly it looks like paying your taxes and still "respecting" the government, even if it's not the one you voted for.

Now, like I said, that's more than anything what I felt when I was a kid. Speaking personally, I'm in a very different headspace now as it relates to governance. I also feel like generally speaking all that's shifting, though I've very little to back that up save... gestures at the past couple of decades of American politics.

More to your question however, I think that the kind of social contract I laid out above kinda explains some of what you've asked. Even if you want to say it's purely performative, that's fine. But the fact that Americans are "asked" about how they should be governed implicitly puts the idea in our heads that we're responsible for what our country is doing. It's not just "some dottering old idiot at the top of the org chart decided this thing", it's we. America is doing this thing. Even if the truth really is that some dottering old fool made a decision out of personal ambition or greed. We get it drilled into our heads from a very young age that this is our government. And no matter how much you try to distance yourself from that... it still irks you, somewhere in the back of your head.

Maybe, at some point before I was born, that was expressed as a point of pride. I could see some folks being proud of what America was or what it stood for, once upon a time. Now though? I find it hard to believe that that mindset could find any other expression but shame. And weirdly, I believe that's true regardless of what your politics are. Different reasons are at play there depending on what your politics are, of course. But lately it feels like everyone's got some grievance against the government. Some reason to feel ashamed about what "our" government, what "we" are doing. Whatever that thing is for you, you don't want it being done in your name. But the central trick of American "democracy" is that you don't get to just walk away. Whatever is being done is being done "in your name" whether you want it or not. And it's been that way since before you were born.

A tangentially related correlate here is that I feel like a lot of Americans don't feel represented by their government anymore. I certainly don't feel that way, and I haven't since Obama was president. That was roughly back when I was young enough to uncritically believe some of the views I've expressed here. Things have changed a little bit. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because part of what I think is going on is that the social contract is breaking down along the lines of nobody feeling like the government they have is actually representing their interests. Maybe, if this goes on for long enough, the social contract will change into something different entirely. Maybe this "shame" we all seem to feel will turn American society into something different than what it currently is, if it's given the time to do so. But, I can't really read the tea leaves on that one. All I know is things just can't keep going the way their going. Something's gonna break eventually.

Why is it not our fault? Shouldn't we be responsible for our society? If you're not responsible for your Society then what incentive is there to change it? We should feel guilty. America's only the way it is now because we all failed.

Because other people will blame you regardless, so it makes you wish you could avoid even telling them

Honestly, in this situation it's likely more performative than an actual feeling people have. It's a good way to acknowledge that someone isn't happy with the impact our country is having on the world.

American tech companies created algorithms that happen to boost videos and news articles of fringe/extreme occurrences that take place here. The mainstream news networks also prioritize content like that, for the same reason: It's very profitable. Boring news/content just doesn't make much money.

People who have never visited the US seem to have a very distorted understanding of what everyday life is like here. We display a pretty embarrassing caricature of our country for the world to see.

And to make things even more embarrassing, we made our government ridiculous, and made our politics become pop culture (yet also very tribal) over the last ~15 years.

It’s a sort of in-group cringe.

Emotions aren't entirely rational with a clearly thought out process to justify why one should feel them. In any case, its common enough for people to assign the general actions of people within a group to the group as a whole (which isnt really fair or a reflection of reality, but can be pragmatic at times and requires less thought and information than judging on an individual basis, so it makes sense that people's brains are wired up to do it even if its not always desirable). This can get extended to the groups one is a part of oneself, to include those whose membership one did not choose. And the US at the moment has even worse than typical leadership, has a great deal of power for that leadership to abuse, still has free enough media for people within it to stand a good chance of knowing about at least some of it, and if youre here on lemmy youre probably running into people with a somewhat higher than normal awareness of a lot of the historical abuses previous Americans have perpetrated just because it leans left and anti-establishment and those things get talked about a lot in such spaces.

I think it's those who are tricked into thinking their votes are really determining government things who would directly feel at fault for america. Lot's of us know we are nothing more than powerless blobs whose only hope is for WW3 to just happen already so America can be forcibly changed.

Because it is their fault.

Hmm.. So these posts are now coming up on lemmy. Seems like lemmy is getting on the radar for some mainstream narative control.

Adding that "chinese" bit is a nice touch.

Let me steal all your shit and then give it to my children and then disappear. I'm sure you won't mind, right? and you'll let them have it, cause it's not their fault.

K thanks, Bye!

My personal answer is that people, particularly left-of-center folk from other Western countries, want us to feel like it's our fault. The way they talk about us.

I don't truly believe it, but that doesn't mean I don't internalize it.

They’re pretty tightly wound tbh