Non US Goons: Tell me what you and your friends/family think about the USA

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Non US Goons: Tell me what you and your friends/family think about the USA

duckmaster: Sep 13, 2004; Mr and Mrs Duck go and stay in a nice hotel.

One night they call room service for some condoms as things are heating up.

The guy arrives and says "do you want me to put it on your bill"

Mr Duck says "what kind of pervert do you think I am?!

QUACK QUACK

CrazySalamander posted:

Please start your post by noting your country and separate thoughts by faction like so:

I can't think of many nationalities of people who would ask other people for their honest opinion of their country and then give them a list of rules on how to do so.

Which pretty much sums up Americans to be fair

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duckmaster: Sep 13, 2004; Mr and Mrs Duck go and stay in a nice hotel.

One night they call room service for some condoms as things are heating up.

The guy arrives and says "do you want me to put it on your bill"

Mr Duck says "what kind of pervert do you think I am?!

QUACK QUACK

Earwicker posted:

I agree Bernie is a left centrist. The governments of many other countries are now considerably to the right of that position and the trend seem to be increasing. You are right thare was a time when both parties in the US were completely dominated by moderate conservatives while much of the rest of the developed world was to the left, but that's no longer the case today.

A left-wing party didn't win successive national elections in the UK until 2001, France was governed by right wing administrations until 1981 (and their brief flirtation with socialism ended in 1986), the centre-right Christian Democrat Party won most seats in all but one of every West German election since the end of the Second World War, the centre-right Christian democrats were never out of government in the Netherlands between 1914 and 1994 and Spain was governed by an actual literal real life fascist until 1979 (when the people elected a, you guessed it, centre-right Christian Democrat party). I'll let you take a wild guess which party governed Italy from 1946 until 1996, although here's a clue: it starts with "centre right" and ends with "Christian Democrat".

The myth that the developed world had left-wing governments at the height of the motherfucking Cold War is preposterously inplausible.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 00:49

duckmaster: Sep 13, 2004; Mr and Mrs Duck go and stay in a nice hotel.

One night they call room service for some condoms as things are heating up.

The guy arrives and says "do you want me to put it on your bill"

Mr Duck says "what kind of pervert do you think I am?!

QUACK QUACK

Earwicker posted:

I never said that the period I was talking about was "at the height of the Cold War" I have no idea where you got that from, I wasn't referring to that period at all.

I was responding to a poster who was claiming that the leftmost American politician was still to the right of politicians from other countries. There was a time when this generalization was close to true, mainly during the George W Bush years, when both parties in the US were dominated by moderate conservatives and much of the developed world was indeed to the left, and this became exaggerated by the US response to 9/11 and especially the Iraq war. But my point is that this situation is no longer the case, the American population has since then been pulled in more extreme directions and things have changed quite a bit in other countries since that time as well.

Also please note that saying other countries are to the left of the US is not at all the same thing as saying they have "left wing governments". The UK was to the left of the US in many respects well before an actual left wing party attained power in 2001. Many other countries, even when a centre right party (in their context) was at the helm, still managed to have national healthcare and significant worker protections for example which in the US have traditionally been considered too "socialist" to be politically viable.

We'll never win this argument as long as Americans continue to hand wave away everything about European politics by saying, "well Europeans are just more left wing than us".

Here in the UK at least we see our taxes leaving our paychecks and expect to get that money back, whether its physically getting it back in the form of pensions when retired or benefits when unemployed or getting it back in the form of services such as healthcare or policing or legal aid or whatever. In other words, we expect the state to work for us, something I at least consider to be a ~~somewhat~~ right wing opinion. Americans seem content to pay their taxes to some monolithic state apparatus which spends it all on the millitary and other dubious paramillitary agencies whilst gently suggesting their citizens should be saluting the flag and standing for the national anthem at baseball games. They insist you pay taxes to the state even when you live abroad and you actually have something called Homeland Security... at least some of you must be aware how Stalinist this all sounds? There seems to be a huge difference in what we consider left wing to what you do, and whether that's on a social, political or economical level (or all three or whatever) I just don't know.

Having said all that I'm an intelligent and well rounded person and I realise the cultural differences between our parts of the world, so I don't get too worked up about it. Americans are chill for the most part

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 01:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Non US Goons: Tell me what you and your friends/family think about the USA