Ask Lemmy

We've had a couple of reports about this post, but I'm going to let it slide for the moment because the discussion seems mostly respectful. Let's keep it polite though please.

Here's my attempt to explain this in as few words as possible:

American Exceptionalism is imploding.

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Longer explanation:

From a cultural narrative/myth standpoint, a whole lot of us were trained and taught to believe that 'America is the best country in the world'.

This was the source of our national optimism, our national belief that we can achieve anything we decide to do, that we are the force for good in the world, that we can be the shining city on the hill, the role model, the 'good guy'.

You can interpret that in different ways, its flexible enough to hold true within the Overton Window of 'acceptable' political viewpoints.

But the problem is that it has become increasingly obvious that this myth is a complete lie nowadays, that it was built on a false, sanitized version of history, which itself was perpetuated by our education system and popular media until very recently.

So at a group scale... this is the national myth, and its been obliterated, so now... we as a collective have just splintered into highly polarized factions.

At an individual scale, American Exceptionalism means that you as an individual live in 'The land of opportunity', ie, we live in a meritocratic society that rewards good character, good intentions, diligent work and study with a life of wealth amd freedom superior to what can be achieved elsewhere.

But, as our economic systems have become consolidated, our political systems have eroded to naked oligarchy, its now clear to the individual that... what was promised to be obtainable to any one, now basically isn't: class/income mobility is so bad now that we basically actually live in a classed society of hereditary nobility, determined by wealth. They just don't have titles like Duke or Baron, they have titles of Executive Director, CEO and Member of the Board.

... Our egos cannot accept this, and internalize it as a personal failure, and express it outwardly as everyone else's failure.

Deep down, we were supposed to be able to be successful if we put in the work.

A whole lot of people did put in the work, and most of them got fucked.

So we are angry about that, and most of us carry that chip on our shoulder, that we've all been scammed.

But we don't agree on why we've been scammed, how we've been scammed, or how this should be addressed.

...

I concur with you that this will not end well.

We are a fracturing, dying empire, a third world country with a gucci belt, and we elected a racist rapist facist conman.

And we have more privately owned guns than people.

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I agree with many other posters that social media prioritizing ostentacious wealth and bravado / dominance displays certainly does not help, but I'm going with the 'American Exceptionalism Imploding' explanation to attempt to explain how Americans in particular, compared to other nations, are becoming so vicious and hostile so rapidly.

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Sure would have been nice if people realized 20 years ago that Carlin was not joking whatsoever when he said:

"They call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Bowie was right to be afraid of Americans.

Eyeballs on content equals money. Rage equals more eyeballs, thusly more money.

I hope you're not naive enough to think it also isn't happening where you are, too.

Our standard of living is collapsing and we have no way out because all of our media is controlled by billionaires, all our politicians are controlled by billionaires, the economy is controlled by billionaires, our entertainment is controlled by billionaires. This is what the billionaires want, so it's what the billionaires get. I'm probably about to lose my hrt and could soon find myself in financial ruin because Texas is trying to establish bounty laws that'd allow people to sue trans people and doctors who offer gender affirming care. Healthcare costs are out of control as well. It cost me $300 for a single appointment at planned parenthood to start hrt. My therapist, who I see weekly, costs over $200 a session. Insurance will not cover either one, because it doesn't see either one as being medically necessary.

So yes, we are getting extremely pissed off.

It's not just the US.

The underlying cause you're looking for is wealth inequality.

The vast majority of people are worker drones. We will work hard all of our lives in unsatisfying jobs with minimal leisure time, and if we get really lucky we can stop work for a few years before we die when we're too sick to work any more.

This general discontent will manifest in hatred in one way or another. Social media is channelling it into different things but the underlying cause is the same.

This is also what it feels like living here. America teaches everyone that everything is a zero sun game and you can't get anywhere without putting someone else down. Community is not something most people value, instead preferring isolationism. There's also a major lack of education.

It's not an American thing it's a human thing.

The more time spent angry the more active and larger the amygdala gets.

So now when in a situation the amygdala is calling the shoots, and it's either calling for blood or for you to run.

It's how we evolved, if we're surrounded by anger, fear, and confrontation we switch over to a mode that can handle that.

The current problem is fearmongering and billionaire ran media that keeps telling everyone to panic, so they do.

People get in this state from the media, interact with others and it spreads. Society as we know it is incredibly recent on an evolutionary scale, so it is often shocking how fast we can slide back to people who are thinking on a short timeline where 20 years is "forever ago".

That's not even getting into wealth inequality and how resource scarceness while young can fuck someone up for life.

can't even safely walk alone in public during the night or safely send your kid to school

This isn't true, the media just makes it look that way. The instances of school shooting are very dramatic, but statistically, your kid is in more danger on the drive to school than from a school shooting.

So you're stereotyping a country of 341 million people based off of your personal interactions with a few of them on the internet?

We're not a monoculture, bud. How would you feel if I asked "Why does it seem like Europeans have become so judgmental and preachy in the past years?"

My ideas are similar to a couple of other comments, but maybe I'll phrase them in a way that unites them and is easy to understand. Let's see.

American exceptionalism is deeply ingrained in culture and associated with patriotism. See reciting the pledge of allegiance in schools. This includes the concept of the American dream: working hard = good life.

I'm not sure if the US was ever like that, but it's certainly not like that now. The key thing is that it's becoming more evident if you pay attention. There's a rift between people paying attention and people not paying attention. The people paying attention have discarded the American dream and maybe even exceptionalism, but those not paying attention have not. Additionally/alternatively, people may see different reasons for the American dream no longer being valid.

So you kind of have 2 + N camps. One camp still believes in American exceptionalism and the American dream and gets pissed that other people are seemingly trying to change/ruin it. One camp believes these concepts are dead and blames on various systems that need changing. (More on that later.) N camps believe these concepts are dead because of , e.g. blacks, Muslims, communists, foreigners, pick your poison. Sadly, this last group is the most visible because they're the most rage-inducing.

So the first and last sets mentioned above provide pretty clear reasons for anger: either frustrations at what should be fellow Americans in solidarity or bigots. The systems people also have a reason to be angry: the systems are well entrenched via various methods, and it's unclear how to start untangling the mess. Some blame billionaires. Some blame politics. Some blame both. But even if there's agreement about which problem is the highest priority, people get frustrated about conflict around potential solutions or the general inability to acquire focus on solutions due to the sheer number of them.

Combine all of this with an economic squeeze on standard of living, the rage-bait nature of social media and mainstream media, psychological negative bias, and just general (unfortunate) virtuous cycles, and you get a recipe for an ever growing angry society.

The people with the most ability to fix this have no incentive to. The people in power benefit from the current system. An angry and divided population is easier to manipulate and control. It also helps that the US is very geographically large, making physical threats less of an issue (except for CEO assassinations, I guess).

Lastly, the internet fucks us. Research shows (normally I'd cite sources, but I gotta get back to work in a minute. Internet points to whomever can find the source and share) that the social media echo chambers aren't actually the problem. People can be very open to new ideas depending on the presentation and the source. We already had echo chances of geography before the internet, and people were generally more trusting of the people physically nearby, even if their ideas differed. The problem is the anonymity of the internet, the volume of conflicting/unfamiliar ideas, and the way they're presented (e.g. rage-bait). Given that Americans are spending more time on the internet, they're exposed to more seemingly madness from crazy strangers and sometimes associate even the people around them with those crazy online strangers. We group them into these tribes and define them as the enemy. When we start recognizing that these people could be our neighbors, societal trust plummets. When you can't trust the people around you, how are you supposed to relax and feel safe? If you feel like you're always in psychological or physical danger, won't you be more prone to anger and defensiveness?

We weren't ready for the internet

You have every right to be worried, the American empire is in decline and its ruling class is becoming increasingly fascist. This is reflected in public and online discourse and you have clearly taken notice. I would note though that what you see on FOX news is not followed by much of the younger generations. This is not to say that reactionaries do not exist amongst our youth, they certainly do and they have a fervor to them as well. They simply follow more contemporary fascist like Shapiro, Peterson, Fuentes, and billionaires like Musk. As well as manosphere content more often than not.

It is worth noting though that leftist political movements are growing rapidly too. We are at quite the disadvantage though.

Keep paying attention, it will get worse.

The problem is confirmation bias. Americans are actually becoming more left-leaning and accepting. Younger generations are rejecting the hateful & destructive legacy of the US, and spreading this ideology to each other, which is exactly why the government is trying to ban TikTok. Just look at military recruitment numbers. Look at how well leftism and anti-imperialism performs in polling among people younger than boomers and Gen X.

But as communist theorists predicted would happen, as the population moves left the capitalists in power move further right and embrace fascism to entrench their power.

Leftism is spreading faster than fascism, but fascists do not threaten capital, so they’re not censored. Thus you see far higher representation of far-right fascism in the news and in positions of power, because that’s all they want you to see and the only people they allow into power. It tricks you into believing these ideals are gaining in popularity, when in reality it’s over representation of fascism by systems that don’t really oppose it.

For example, the majority of Americans support ending US funding of the genocide in Gaza. But if all you see is what’s allowed on the news and what the people in power support, you’d believe there’s overwhelming support in the US for the genocide. In reality, they’re increasing the police budgets to violently suppress criticism of the empire.

The media everywhere knows that showing people who are on an extreme gets more views. So that is what you will see from outside. As for the people you have meet. The chill people don't travel as much.

It's not so much Americans as online discourse that's soured in this way. Day-to-day IRL people are no more aggressive or hateful than they've always been.

But online? I don't know whether to blame botting or the effect described by the John Gabriel Internet Fuckwad Theorem, but it's bad out there. The only cure is a well-curated whitelist.

I only read the first half of your post because it was kind of meandering, but most of what you're seeing is just online. People have always been assholes online, ever since the early days of the internet. There are a lot of very intentional, very engineered agendas out there to drive people apart, and set them at each other's throats. This is hyper effective on the internet. It doesn't usually carry over into the real world. Most Americans I know, meet, or see in real life are still friendly, caring, and generous. Just go read about European impressions of Americans after returning from vacation to the USA and you'll see that same sentiment echoed from people on your side of the pond. There are certainly people who have taken their online persona offline into their real world identities, but they're the exception, not the rule.

TLDR: the internet is not the real world and you'll see the worst of people online, combined with a fair bit of propaganda and astroturfing.

The real answer is they've been conditioned. They have so much excess, but rather than funnel that excess to those who need it, they all decide to hoard it and use it to gain as much more excess as possible.

They're greedy. They're entitled. They're insecure. It's a bad combination.

TLDR The US is a mafia-esque arms dealer / financial scam that masquerades as a “moral democracy”. Capital won in America, and this is what happens.

Each person is not a member of a society or community, but is a competitor. We are atomized, severed from our families and communities and increasingly told we are commodities ourselves. This strategy works in favor of central power as it actively works to erode the ties between people, and that makes them isolated and unable to band together as easily.

Sure there’s individualism and other toxic mythologies that play some part, but the country has increasingly become a corrupt business that serves its board of directors and not its employees. I’m sure there are countless moments where you could make an argument that this process went into overdrive, for me it’s around Regan and after and the various policies that led to destruction of unions, led to offshoring and functionally turned the US into a financialized service economy. Maybe that’s just coincidence and the real cause was the collapse of the USSR, like I said there’s probably many moments/causal events one could make a reasonable argument for.

What we have now: some clown dimension right wing that would like to legalize sport hunting immigrants and the homeless while fire sale busting out the entire US govt, and a bloodless “liberal” center-right that merely wants to criminalize, imprison and then work for profit the people the right would like to sport-hunt, while funneling money to their friends and family. Both are fine with genocide, provided the weapons proceeds end up in the correct place. Those two political fronts represent a section of the populace that is likely less than .01%.

Media and online interactions play up the differences in US society. They run deep (their civil war, the difference between Democrat and Republican states, racial tensions), but I don't think they're as significant as your post suggests.

American culture generally seems very loud and direct. I think here in Europe people are way more reserved

I've worked with people from the US, Germans, and Finns. Generally the Germans and Finns have been more direct.

I also heard things that many Americans are physically beating their children

It's a big country. I'm sure a few are, just like a few Europeans beat their kids, but generally no. I would check your sources on that.

When I once asked a similar question on Reddit the only thing I got back was bashing and personal attacks and I hope it's not the same here

Your statements and questions seem to reference the worst that we see of the US in social media and mainstream news. For someone who lives in the US (or is cynical), they could come across as trolling.

guns are popular and legal in America to the point where you can't even safely walk alone in public during the night or safely send your kid to school

Absolutely untrue, hardly ever seen a gun in public that wasn't on a cop. Born and bred in Oklahoma (extremely conservative), worked in South Chicago (gangbangers everywhere) and now live in NW Florida (conservative again). And I've been in a lot of scary places and ran with seriously sketchy people when young.

About half of guns deaths are suicides. Most of the rest are gangs doing gang shit or interpersonal violence. Most murder victims knew their killer, anything but random.

Year in, year out, CDC stats have vehicular death at the same numbers as gun deaths. Stay away from shitty people and places, don't kill yourself, you're far more likely to die in or by a car. That scares the crap out of me, yet no one talks about it because it's normal.

ITT: a bunch of Americans struggling to contain their simmering rage in order to formulate a coherent response.

Seriously though, I'm also European and OP's little screed (which I skimmed after hitting a speed bump in paragraph 4) rings true to me.

A very recent example: the literal bloodthirstiness surrounding the healthcare executive's murder. This really took me aback, not gonna lie. Made me very, very glad I'm not American. For a few days I even reconsidered what I'm doing here. After all, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near such a baying mob if it were in the street.

In answer to the question, loads of books have already been written on it. For example, Ezra's Klein's Why We're Polarized. Didn't read it but I think he makes an argument for changing political incentives because of party re-alignment. A bit unsatisfying.

My first intuition is that it's a reflection of America's declining status in the world. A bit like a guy who's lost his wife and his job, America is going off the rails because it's losing its position as Top Dog in the world. Exhibit A in the genre: Russia. But then this can't be quite everything. After all, Britain lost an absolutely colossal empire and stayed pretty sane. Japan and Germany bounced right back from total national humiliation, too.

Other theories, then. A subconscious awareness of impending ecological collapse propelled by America's uniquely egregious overconsumption? An absence of a decent civil war for 150 years? Not the case for Europe! Maybe you're just itching to kill each other because it's been such a while?

I dunno but I think it's a good question.

People think they have to beat other people at some imagined game to be happy, and forget the game was ever imagined in the first place. It's a delusion.

The dumbest most faithful people in the country have had their religious institutions influenced by Conservative con men since the 70s in an attempt to create a loyal voter base that doesn't care about their politicians causing the worst wealth inequality ever.

Basically the dumbest people on earth have been fooled into attacking straw men instead of being capable of forming associations of cause and effect in reality.

I'm not American but I think the current wave of ugliness is because Obama was elected, and conservative people who are racist in their hearts didn't like that an "uppity Negro" was in the most powerful position in the world for eight years, and they couldn't come up with anyone palatable to beat him. So instead they found who is probably the most obnoxious person in the world to put at the helm of their party, and because conservatives have oppositional defiant disorder, and get off on someone being like they are openly, they flocked to him loudly, where more traditional conservative politicians knocked in vain, and it was just a chance for them to really be themselves. I think they've always been this way, but just not as loud about it.

Also Zuckface fuckface fed them a steady diet of weaponized disinformation about anyone who wasn't white or Republican so it made them even uglier and stupider. But they'll probably all die of preventable disease as time goes on, so that's something to look forward to.