Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?
Overall, no. In most places things are peaceful and nice. In some places there is a lot of crime and squalor. A lot depends on your location, perspective, and luck.
To all and every non-american - the only reason you’re ever told that America is great, is because it is being compared to, to where you are now. America is NOT everything though. It’s got it’s own problems.
Honestly, no. People bitch a lot but I’ve lived here a lot of years, my healthcare is fine, despite owning several guns I’ve never seen one fired at anyone, and I can pretty much do whatever I want.
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The thing is places aren’t bad because there are gangs or homeless or what old ladies in Russia like to mention - drunk people. All of them are here(or rather wgo they are) exacly because said place is terrible.
I am thinking of some South American countries, they are beautiful places with resources and work, but not safe. Poverty doesn’t equal crime. Lack of rule of law does though. Gangs can single-handedly bring a place down that was otherwise ok. Unemployment is a big opportunity for gangs to form.
Shit country, great pay in a few fields.
If you’re skilled labour and not a software engineer, just move to Canada tbh.
In 2015 I was in Niger doing NGO work and the founder of the NGO said to me that the most important thing about America is the peaceful transition of power. That next year that transition of power came under direct attack and then again in 2020.
From my travels and the people I talk to, we have been under attack since at least 2008. From domestic terrorists working with foreign governments. Factions in spy agencies actively engaged in domestic espionage to help elites take more power. Cultist religious mega churches spreading misinformation and conspiracies in rural areas for decades priming for a “revolution”.
Billionaires that you hear about daily are also in on it.
You better fight for your democracy by showing up to every town meeting you can America because you will absolutely lose everything. Support unions and delete that extreme individualism in your programming that capitalist America wants to instill in each person so you never organize against them.
This is the time to get out in front of 2024 and fight for your rights and a reasonable society not this psycho bullshit we are stuck in right now.
That next year that transition of power came under direct attack
I’m pretty sure Obama allowed power to be transferred peacefully to Trump, just like every other president had before him.
I think they meant that Trump said he’d say it was rigged if he didn’t win.
Worker rights kinda suck and it can be difficult to form communities due to being more spread out and car centric.
Short answer, no. Longer answer, not even close. America has its problems, but it’s a wonderful place to live. Those of us who are older remember a time when it felt more free, and had a less intrusive government, but it’s still the land of opportunity.
I was born poor and grew up on welfare. I worked my ass off my entire life, starting as a paperboy at the age of 12. I’ve literally bled and cried working my way out of poverty, but I did it. I’m now pretty well-to-do. There are thousands of countries in the world where that’s not possible.
I know a political refugee who fled to America 40 years ago with nothing. He had literally nothing when he arrived. He is a multi-millionaire doctor now, with a huge house on 10 acres of land, and he drives a brand new top of the line Mercedes Benz. All of his kids are either college graduates, or in college.
We’re free to criticize our government without reprisal. We’re free to express ourselves and be who we want. We have protections against discrimination, and we have workers rights. Yes, all of that could be improved still, but that’s always been a battle and always will be.
Most Americans will never experience anything you read in the news. Their lives are comfortable and safe. Food is plentiful, as is entertainment.
There are still a lot of things to fix in our country, and some things are sliding backwards, but we can and will continue to fight for progress. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Yes there are truths to it, but you have to remember that we’re a country of 320 million people. Texas and California, just 2 of the 50 states, are large enough to cover the entirety of Europe. So you read a lot of bad news online, but it’s a concentration of all the bad stuff from across an enormous country. There are bad parts of America, and some places you’d rather not live, but most of the country is a pretty great place.
Nothing is ever so black-and-white when it comes to talking about the state of the USA right now. Yes, we are still comparitavely well-off when stacked against developing nations, but we have unique problems that are a real sore spot for many that aren’t getting any better and nobody is addressing them, letting the wounds fester.
For example, we have a lot of poverty. Sure, our lowest of the low class probably still enjoy a lifestyle better than that of someone from a remote village in some far away corner of the world, but the promise of prosperity is not equally accessible and the idealized “middle class” is vanishing rapidly. Homelessness is a crisis in basically every large city, especially in the warmer parts of the country, and inflation is still not under control which means the cost of living is going to be unsustainable for a lot of people very soon.
If you put politics aside, things really aren’t as bad as they could be, but that doesn’t stop people from voicing their concerns that things aren’t as good as they could be either.
I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot.
It’s called soft power. Hollywood and US military and fiscal aid makes it seem that the US is friendly to your country and a prosperous land of freedom, when it’s anything but.
Soft power is also why people think of Korea and Japan as more favourable and less conservative than countries with similar views on women, LGBT rights , etc that do not have the same level of soft power due to cultural and technological exports .
There’s a lot of opportunities here. There’s a lot of money here. We also have a lot of racism and greed.
It’s not that bad. The immigrants who come here stick around and spend 15 years to become citizens, if it was that bad, they’d turn around and go home.
I think America suffers from impossible expectations. A lot of people have it so good they think thinks should be perfect, and when they aren’t, they get upset and complain a lot. I think some travel and perspective would do a lot of people a lot of good.
Obviously a country as large as the US is going to have a bit of everything and everyone will have their own experience and view. For me, my family, my friends, my relatives… we’re all doing fine. We have homes, cars, food on the table, walking around money. We’re not running into issues with the law. Are there things we might want to see tweaked or change, sure, but day-to-day we’re able to live our lives without issue. Mass shootings are tragic and horrible, but I’m not worrying about a mass shooter every time I got to the store or anything. Healthcare has it’s pros and cons. It can be expensive, but with insurance and the lower taxes because the government isn’t paying for it, I don’t know how that shakes out. The plus side is we have options, and if someone has they money they can get something done, and we were also first in line for things like the COVID vaccine, because the companies could make so much of their profits here… that then makes it easier for them to provide it to little or no cost to other parts of the world, since we covered most of the R&D costs. We pay more, but we get it first.
Could things be better, of course. Things can always get better and that’s part of America… always striving to be better than yesterday. That being said, things are nearly as bad as a lot of the news and internet makes it out to be. Your average person going about their life is just living their life. It’s not all this crazy nonsense seen in the media. This last week the city put in a new road on the street I live on, I got sick, so I went to the doctor and didn’t pay anything (I think I already hit my limit for the year), and then went to the pharmacy to get the meds 20 minutes later. I went to the store, got some food. My mom called about a cake she is making for her grandson’s birthday… just life, no real drama or crazy stuff. I’m sure others had a very different week than me, lol.
There are lots of worse places to be, but it definitely isn’t “namba wan”. Remember, it’s a country of extremes and superlatives. “Everything” is “always” the “worst” or the “best”. There’s “never” a middleground.
Also, out interface with the US is online and the media. Online, people often express their unfiltered opinion or an extreme opinion + behavior, simply because they aren’t face to face with others. It feels much less intimate and thus people behave that way. This has been going on long enough that the opinions online have taken a foothold IRL and the US is a good example thereof (from my outside view).
Also, don’t forget, there are many people speaking English and talking about the US that do not actually live there and weigh in on stuff. Some crazy af opinions might not even be coming from a person physically in the US.
Yes and no.
We do have mass shootings, but we also live in a country of 330 million (humongous population size), but every mass shooting makes national news, so it seems far worse than it is. Also, most mass shootings are gang violence that get lumped in with what we normally consider “random mass shootings” to pump up the numbers and scare people.
Healthcare could definitely be better, but 67% of Americans are satisfied with their insurance. I would still much prefer a universal healthcare system.
Overall, America definitely has its ups and downs, but a lot of the “AMERICA BAD” rhetoric is just part of a reddit-style circlejerk where people get socially rewarded for trashing it.
Expect this comment to be downvoted from the same crew.
Healthcare could definitely be better, but 67% of Americans are satisfied with their insurance.
No offense, but this sounds a bit like asking the congenitally blind if they miss seeing.
I don’t disagree with that.
Go outside dude. “America bad” is not based on reddit, there are millions of citizens out there who have real issues with the way our country is run, real activist groups doing protests and trying to spread awareness.
All you have to do is open your mind to be able to see these problems (instead of downplaying issues like mass murder) and listen to the people who feel they’ve been disadvantaged
Yes, how dare I look at the actual statistics over listening to people that “feel” a certain way.
Trying to downplay the old gun violence again? There is still this though: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html
And those numbers only go up to 2018. This year, we have already had as many school shootings by June as during the entire year of 2018: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2023/01
But yeah, I guess some people consider that ‘scare tactics’. smh
Yes, this is exactly what I was talking about.
But yes, don’t let silly facts get in the way of your narrative.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
So what about statistics from the Center of Homeland Defense and Security? Probably also just inflated, right? https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a01
Do you not realize how much lower those numbers are than what you originally posted?
You are undermining your own claim.
They also include deaths that never happened at schools.
Also from your own link:
The percentage of youth homicides occurring at school remained at less than 3 percent of the total number of youth homicides
From your own data, in 2018, there were 10 homicides of youths in schools.
https://www.census.gov/topics/education/school-enrollment.html
On average in America, there are 73.8 million students in school.
That’s a percentage of .0000001%
Very close to your chances of dying from a lightning strike (.0000006%)
You skipped over the whole 50% of the population lost the constitutional right to control their own body.
You skipped over a lot of stuff.
America is pretty bad, and we’ll never get better if everyone keeps insisting we’re not that bad.
You can’t lose a human right. Their right to bodily autonomy is being infringed upon, but they still have it, no matter what the government says.
I appreciate what you mean but the idea that human rights aren’t granted is just a philosophy, not something that actually matches reality.
That is to say, whether I agree with your premise or not doesn’t change reality at all.
Do you think we should switch to the abortion laws that most european countries have?
Do you know they are typically stricter than what we have here?
Stricter than a complete ban?
Where is abortion banned in the US?
This, of course, excludes where the health of the mother is in danger, or in cases of rape and incest.
Dude take 30 seconds and google it. Yes some of these places don’t have exceptions for rape and incest.
Look at you being the *chef’s kiss* perfect example of what I’m talking about. Why should anyone take your word on how great or not great America is when you’re this misinformed.
State should not have the right to pick and choose like that. Textbook way of taking away people’s liberty.
This is going to be tongue in cheek…
So I can medically treat my body if dying or raped… Good.
Now about abortions lol.
Do you really need me to Google this for you?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html
See, this just isn’t true. There are a number of states that have the right to abortion enshrined in their constitution. Others are voting to have it added to their constitutions. Just because it was removed nationally, doesn’t mean everyone lost that right.
Granted, it is absolutely a tragedy what is going on in the more backwards states. But things like this make it sound worse than the situation is nationwide. This is the issue the OP has. If you only see the negatives that are reported in the news, it sounds like the US is an absolute hellhole, which is not most people’s lived experience.
It is true that 50% of the population lost this constitutional right.
There are state CONSTITUTIONS that protect this right, so no it’s not true.
Dude you’re not going to get through this with shitty wordplay. They did in fact lose a US constitutional right. This isn’t a debatable statement, it is a fact.
What is your end game here?
The point is that people’s QOL is highly dependent on where in the US they live. Local laws have a much bigger impact to people’s quality of life than whatever happens in Washington. I did not lose my constitutional rights to an abortion because I live in a sane place. If I live somewhere like Texas, I would have.
The reason the rest of the world thinks the US is so terrible is that we act like the whole country is impacted the same way by national decisions. Or that all idiotic local laws apply to everyone the same way.
The whole country is impacted when rights are stripped from anyone. Look at what you’re saying: If some people are living a good life then it can’t be all that bad. Well, Elon Musk is living a pretty swell life so it doesn’t matter how many homeless people die in the street from hunger tonight, right? I know it’s kind of jumping the shark, but your rationale would call America “not that bad” if slavery were still allowed nationally but forbidden, in some states, right?
We should be judged by what those that have allow to happen to those that have not. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
The only way we’ll improve is if people realize how shitty it is and vote for better reps and better laws.
I mean, case in point: someone replied to my comment apparently not knowing abortion is banned in places in America. I don’t even understand how that’s possible it was everywhere on the news for months.
America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.
You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.
One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.
less strict food safety laws
I mean, you can’t even make cheese with raw milk in America, but other than that
a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns).
Absolutely.
J.J. McCullough did a really good video about this fact, I’d definitely recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCVQKD3jH2M&ab_channel=J.J.McCullough
Fantastic video. J.J. completely nails it on multiple topics.
I would also add that the capitalist class loves to promote the idea if America as the greatest nation on earth because that storyline benefits them. They’ve already won the game and are benefiting from our current system. They don’t want it to change.
If we admit we have shortcomings–large gap in wealth equality, lack of accessible and affordible health services, piss poor public transportation, unaffordable child care paired with living costs so large 2 incomes are required, poor school funding, pervasive gun violence, and Policing that emphasizes violence, just to name a few-- then we are also acknowedging that we have to change things. Why would those who greatly benefit from our current system want change?
Why are there “removed” words in your comment?
Not removed for me.
Maybe you have a potty mouth blocking Greasemonkey script or something.
I have heard lemmy.ml blocks curse words. My account is on lemmy.world and I see no removeds.
Quite ironic.
Poetic really. A meme is born.
You can’t be serious. I am using lemmy.ml.
Can you see the word “bitch”?
If you’re saying “the B word,” then no, I can’t.
The lemmy.ml server even rejected a post I attempted that addressed this:
I can’t upload another photo, because Connect says that the image service is “down,” but it rejects with “error: slurs”
Anyway, this is my last post here. It’s been fun, lemmy.ml.
Oh right, I had heard about that: there’s a filter. I’m not sure what instance it’s on and what words it filters, though.
I was using the verb version of a word for a female dog.
It’s lemmy.ml and saying bitch is not allowed. I don’t need a nanny instance.
And certainly not one where you can’t even have a proper discussion about dogs.
