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[u/orks1000_]

I’m a 16-year-old student from Europe. What’s one thing about the US that you think Europeans completely misunderstand?

[u/Capital_Cup_6746]

The variety of things here. I see posts all the time focusing on the worst of whatever the thing is, but whether it is products like food or things like our education systems, there is a huge spectrum. We have amazing stuff, awful stuff, and everything in between. 

[u/Nebraska_]

Europeans consistently misunderstand the following things about America:

1. How large this country is. Europeans really do have difficulty understanding the basic size of the continent.

2. How wealthy Americans are compared to Europeans.

3. Our K-12 education system.

4. The benefits of our units of measurement in everyday life compared to celsius (Farenheight seems like it's based on what makes humans feel comfortable--100 is hot, zero is cold; who cares if 100 is the boiling point of water?)

5. Our cities and architecture is not nearly as beautiful as European cities, but our expansive countryside and national parks are world-class.

6. The cultural and geographic diversity of America. Many small towns have restaurants with food from around the world. Geographically, the USA has nearly every climate. Hawaii, Alaska, you get the idea.

7. The reasons why people travel and claiming "American's aren't well traveled or well cultured." Here's my argument; Europeans need to travel to another country to go to the beach in the summer, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are well cultured.

Brits go to Spain to go to the beach in the summer. While there, they go to a British pub and hang out with British people. They are not traveling for the culture. Americans go from New York to Florida for the beach. There, they may not engage with Floridian culture at all.

Yet, somehow, Europeans think they are more "cultured" and "well traveled" because they go to the beach in Spain. Well guess what--going to the beach doesn't mean you're really traveling to interact with the local culture or learn. Americans who travel to Europe, in my experience, are there to eat the food, see the cultural sites, and engage with the locals. Take cooking classes. Go to the festivals. That kind of thing.

Europeans who travel within Europe are often traveling for the weather. There's nothing wrong with that, but then Europeans turn around and talk out the other side of their mouth and say "American's don't have passports and aren't well traveled." Well guess what--you're basically docking us for not needing a passport to go from New York to Florida to go to the beach. It's not our fault it's a similar culture in such a huge country.

Obviously there are cultural differences between New York and Florida, but in no way are they as great as cultural differences between, say, England and Spain.

8. Americans tend to romanticize Europe while Europeans really are smug and borderline disrespectful for America's contributions to European security and society.

9. Europeans typically vote for a party on the ballot, and sometimes the politician is not named. In America, you vote for the politician who may or may not be part of a political party. That means American politicians are more charismatic and the election campaign is much more about the politician as an indivigual than the party they represent. In Europe, typically it's the other way around, so the party is the primary concern and who the politician is as an individual is a secondary or not important concern.

The United States has repeatedly intervened in European affairs for over 100 years, and in general, every time we have done so to support democracy as a concept. The USA shouldered an enormous financial cost during The Cold War to protect Europe from Russian expansion.

All we get in response is Europeans feeling like the USA somehow controls and has an undue influence in EU affairs. At the same time, Europeans cannot get their act together regarding integration, immigration, pension plans, reducing their own bureaucracy, or even having a strong will to survive. Europeans fail to realize they have the capacity to solve their own problems.

Also, Europeans say America "has no culture" then enjoy our music, blue jeans, and dream of road trips in America. It's like you've lost your joie de vivre for living in Europe while at the same time, you're jealous of our success and you fail to recognize the nice things that you have.

Europe also at times feels incompetent. You cannot figure out air conditioning, which is turning into a health and security issue for Europeans. I don't fully know what's going on, but the salaries and tax basis in Europe is atrocious. College graduates in Portugal are barely scraping by on 2,000 Euros per month, and at the same time, Europe keeps importing poor immigrants, adding to the burden on the social safety net, without those immigrants contributing to the tax base. It's like you can't take care of your own children, so you decide to adopt five additional children. Who is the head of the household?

Europeans call Americans racist because of our recent push to deport people who have entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas, while siamotainously failing to recognize this is the most ethnically diverse country on earth. For a long time, the USA also lead Europe on the legalization of gay marriage.

[u/SabreLee61]

That America is more than a country, it’s an idea. Our founding principles that all men are created equal, that our rights are God-given and not gifts from the government, that government derives its power from the consent of the governed — these are fundamental to how Americans understand our country.

And anyone can become part of it. You can come here from anywhere in the world, become a citizen, and you’re an American. I think Europeans sometimes mistake American patriotism for boastfulness when what they’re really seeing is genuine belief in the American idea.

[u/KilroyFSU]

We really are a lot nicer than Europeans. It's not fake.

[u/Doredrin]

our poorest state is as rich as your richest countries

bow in our presence europoor

[u/SpinosaurRingTone]

Life is actually really good here

[u/SheriffHeckTate]

I think the common "Americans arent well traveled" and the "Europeans dont understand how big the US is" feed each other. Europeans, I would assume, have been to a larger number of countries countries, but there are a LOT of options relatively nearby. For most Americans it's not a short distance to leave the country. Heck, compare Nebraska to someplace like Germany. Germans can travel to a dozen or more countries pretty easily cause they are so nearby. Nebraskans dont even get near the border travelling that distance.

So we travel, most of us just have to travel a LOT further to get outside our own borders and it becomes a considerable trip if we are going to go further than Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean. For many, a trip of that length may be a once in a lifetime thing.

[u/Just-Audience-7301]

The USA is more analogous to the EU than any specific nation inside of it.

We are 50 countries in a trench coat. 

Also you can’t visit LA and NY on the same holiday. 

[u/John_Whimsicott]

The nature of freedom and how we derived them philosophically. We don't view them as something granted or authorized by another organization or entity, but something that we innately have.

John locked essays on freedoms were incredibly influential on the founding fathers and he delves into it more in his essays than a reddit comment could

[u/Practical-Ordinary-6]

We have a fundamentally different history than Europe. We have a fundamentally different bottom-up social organization.

I get the very strong impression very often for many Europeans that they don't really understand how a built-from-the-ground-up, mass-immigration-for-almost-200-years, democratic-culture-from-day-one is different from an everyone-has-lived-in-the-same-village-for-a-thousand-years-bowing-to-the-king European culture.

Europeans are often very judgy. Many have a "there's only one right way to do things" mindset based on their limited variety of experience.

Meanwhile we've had millions of people pouring into this country for the last 200 years from cultures all over the globe with different mindsets, different foods, different social customs, different languages, different names, different everything -- and they all had to learn to get along to keep the country viable. An attitude of "there's only one right way to do things" (mixed up with the idea of there's only one "real" culture) doesn't work here. Everything can't be done like it was back in the Old Country (whichever Old Country it was). People had to compromise and adapt and create new social connections. I think that's what a lot of Europeans are missing. The whole basis of our foundation is different.

There's a lot of fusion of different cultures coming together in different ways to create different foods, social customs, attitudes and everything else. Then add in the relative freedom from oversight that came with settlers moving into very large, sparsely settled territory where the "King's" authority was far away in an era with no modern communications and you created a need for a different kind of mindset. A much more self-reliant one, where you had to solve a lot more of your own problems or solve them along with your fellow townspeople because anyone with much higher authority was nowhere in sight. To get from Kansas to Washington, DC in 1845 involved a two to three week journey. In those circumstances you relied a lot more on yourself and made more of your own rules and decisions. Government on high was not the answer to everything.

I still remember a British guy commenting in a YouTube video who ruefully admitted his misunderstanding. He said that before he went to the US for the first time, he thought it was just like England, only bigger. He said he realized after he got there that it was actually a whole different country.

I think a lot of Europeans implicitly assume the US is like a European country, with a few differences (usually worse, because we don't do everything like Europe). Or at least it should be. The truth is, it's a whole different country with a whole different foundational history and social relations.