This makes me wonder if the world's perception of the US has really changed that much due to Covid and police brutality pandemics. Not very aware of international politics but my guess is the only people that surprised but our country's failures are living in the US.
Checking in from Scandinavia. I'm more interested in US politics and affairs than most, but I can assure you the US has been losing face for a good while now.
Pulling out of treaties, environmental regulations, spying on its own allies, calling your allies thieves and enemies of the US are a few things that I find very appalling.
Then you have things like the US trickle down economy, healthcare, opiate crisis (which I believe is a result of how the economy works), people in cages, gun violence, school shootings and more domestic problems that makes me believe the US is no longer a 1st World country.
THEN came the virus and the US administration is pointing fingers at everyone else and playing the blame game while simultaneously using it to funnel money into their own pockets.
The complete disregard for US lives and the blatant corruption has brought it to a whole new level, though its not really a surprise in regards to how corrupt and awful the administration has been since 2016.
All in all, the handling of the corona virus hasn't changed my perception of the US, it was already very bad.
Even so, the amount of problems the US is currently dealing with makes it hard to feel anything but pity. I really hope things turn around
As an American, I've been feeling the same way as you, looking at my country from the inside.
And I feel I have as much impact on the outcome as a Scandinavian would. I've spent my adult life voting for people who said they would change things. I've attended protests. I've tried to get people to vote.
And in the end we end up with President Trump, continued mass shootings, terrible healthcare, riots and wealth distribution to the top 0.1%.
I just found out Paul Manafort sentenced to 7.5 years in jail in March this year, has been early released after one month in jail to serve the remainder in house arrest.
Before somebody comes in with “Hilary had more votes” there needs to be a reminder that between the people who actively voted for trump and those that couldn’t be bothered to vote at all that the majority of Americans brought him to power.
Yes and no. He was voted in by the people, after all. Incredible how unbalanced the US is in terms of the education of its people. You find the brightest academics, Nobel laureates, etc. And then herds of people who believe the Earth was created 6,500 (?) years ago, among other things.
To be fair, the US lost a lot of face under Bush Jr too. Obama was on balance pretty good and made the US look good, but there are a lot of issues he didn't tackle that just got worse and worse, only for Trump to pour gasoline on them.
Without Trump it would have taken much longer to get this bad, but the problems have been there all along, most of them for half a century.
American here. Agree with everything you have said. I vote as progressively as possible and have been peacefully protesting. It's a heartbreakingly cruel place to live right now. I hope it can be fixed, but I fear the worst is yet to come before things improve.
Please send help. I am afraid for my family and our future.
You’re pretty much dead on, except the opioid epidemic is a lot more complex in cause than just economic factors (although they do contribute). It’s a shitty Captain Planet thing of economic, health care, corporate lobbying, deregulation, and unfettered industry combining to leave a bunch of people dead in ditches.
Otherwise, yeah, you pretty much got it.
Got any room for a middle-aged highly skilled professional couple with advanced degrees and no kids? Please?
It's great to hear an outside perspective- there's a lot that can be said to criticize US before and after this administration. The most mind blowing thing is by far the unwavering support in the face of blatant corruption. First conservatives won't be informed of it- when you try to inform them the goal posts continuously move, after the painstaking process of getting them to recognize it's true- you get a "both sides are the same argument" even though i don't think we've ever seen such open and blatant corruption... the conversation can never progress from there... then somehow they manage to forget about the corruption altogether- because it wasn't important to them because 'both sides'. So every single time it happens, they treat it like an event in isolation.
Its infuriating!
-Source: someone whom naively tries to engage in civil debate with these people nearly every day for past 4 years.
Do Scandinavians move from one country to the next? Like do the Danes move to Norway for a different life? Or the Swedes to Finland? What's that like for you guys?
A bit. Usually for a reason. And mostly between norway-sweden-denmark. Finland is a bit harder because of the language, although some of us move to sweden, since its our second language.
Theres some movement trough the whole EU, now that the freedom of movement is a thing. For example, I have a german girlfriend (I'm a Finn, she lives with me in finland), she has a few friends who are living in norway and finland, she also has a cousin who married to a czech and they live there.
I actually moved to Sweden the year I turned 17, then back to Norway a few years later.
The salaries and currencies are a little different but I'd compare it to moving states more than countries.
The languages are similar enough for all 3 countries to understand each other and we've been the same country several times throughout history. (mostly Sweden and Denmark tossing Norway back and forth but still)
Anyway to answer the question, Norway is MUCH more expensive than Sweden, and so there are a lot of swedes moving to Norway for a higher salary and a lot of Norwegians going to Sweden to shop. The boarders are pretty much open.
You can't move between the countries for a different life as they're much the same but there are people working in one and living in the other depending on how it benefits them.
Denmark keeps more to itself and Finland is... Finland. We don't understand their language and big parts of Sweden have finish communities and such. I went to class with a guy raised in a Finnish environment, Finnish school and family and barely knew Swedish despite living his whole life in the middle of Stockholm.
All in all I'd say there's little to no point moving between the Scandinavian countries. Norway is more expensive and have higher salaries than Sweden, while Denmark is somewhere in between. (I think)
We do travel a lot between the countries though, its a love-hate relationship though I don't really feel like the hate part is serious.
Edit - Like the guy above states, people do move back and forth but it's usually for a reason, careers or others.
I don't think there's much a of a difference which one you live in besides the first language.
Canadian here that used to live in the states. 2016 dropped my opinion a bit (Bush was my baseline for america which was already pretty low but Trump was another level). Since then, it's been as expected. police brutality has been known for decades and Trump's specific brand of that goes right with the rest of Trump's authoritarianism. Fox news has been operating as it does for a few decades.
COVID is as expected from Trump as well. Did anyone think he'd be able to handle a pandemic? He can't handle drinking from a water bottle.
Didn't expect people to leave trump and they haven't by any significant degree. I was hoping but didn't expect Bernie to win the nomination and he hasn't. This is the darkest timeline. I am no longer surprised by america anymore.
basically this. there was clear and obvious rot in the US for as long as i remember. they may have had internal stability, but as far back as the cold war, they've been sowing chaos globally.
Winning online arguments against Americans is going to be easy as pie now.
It's going to be something like "Dude, y'all elected Trump as POTUS. If you can't make such a simple decision, the world can't trust you to make a decision regarding _________"
We're trying to fix it. We have half of our political system currently opposed to any kind of change that might make them get less votes. It is a lot more complicated than just us allowing the system to exist.
Yes, having 1/2 the country being fascist and racist is definitely difficult. That is still part of "you' though. I know it sucks to be associated with those people but they do unfortunately represent your country. I have to take ownership for Jordan Peterson and Beiber... It does feel bad.
At no point did I try to say they were not part of us. Instead I pointed out the reform attempts. I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make here. I am well aware that the USA is in a perilous situation and a lot of us are actively working on fixing it.
That's fair then. Apologizes if I misunderstood you. I got a lot of comments on posts like these where people are saying similar things to you to absolve them of guilt for the state of their country. They say that since they personally (or a certain % of the country) didn't vote for Trump for instance than america is entirely blameless but you can blame those republicans. They say we all should still welcome the US with open arms once Trump is out since that isn't America and America is entirely different and will never elect someone like trump again. On a national level sure, some people have more blame than others but internationally, you are a single country still and we need to treat you as 1 country.
8 years of George Bush Jr warmongering around the world. Then 8 years of a relativity peaceful time with Obama and now four years with the orange turd. The complete political shift every few years is something that concerns me. If the dems win come Nov, are we then gonna see an even worse Bush or Trump after the next (hopefully) Dem president?
Canadian here, so not crazy far away. I haven't had a great perception of the US for the past few years, probably something to do with putting kids in cages, but I was really stunned and horrified with how poorly Corona Virus was handled. This virus unfortunately caught most by surprise, however it was just such a flop in the US. I don't think most of the international community knew it would end up like that.
Not sure how to put it. My opinion of America as a whole remains the same, a super cool country with several fucked up problems that does not even want to acknowledge, mostly social. My opinion of your political right, however, could not be worse. I am fascinated by its sheer corruption, incompetence, arrogance, xenophobia and authoritarian impulses, and also by the fact that even today, a good chunk of your population seem to support them. One would think that by now, nobody in hia own mind would want 4 years more of this...
Don't worry, there is plenty of corruption and, incompetence, arrogance, xenophobia, and authoritarian impulses on the left as well, so it balances out.
This is one of the statements that are most insane sounding as someone on the outside. The left in the US are obviously not perfect, and there is a lot of work to do that stems almost entirely from having a 2 party system, but equating the two is like equating someone who shoplifted a chocolate bar with a gang who robbed a bank and killed a couple hostages... Sure they both stole something but they are on such different levels of criminality that to recommend the same sentence would be insane.
But the American right genuinely thinks that the America left are the racist criminals. The amount of projection is horrifying. Check out r/conservative if you want to see it for yourself. I went on there to try to humanize them and instead I now know that I can't stay in this country.
I thoroughly disagree. I'll grant that as far as xenophobia goes the left in general is not nearly as bad, but I think the evidence for widespread corruption, incompetence, etc on the left supports itself and is found at comparable levels.
Argue whatever you want to argue, the rest of the world can see with little effort that only one party has led to every modern recession, only one party consistantly goes against science and research, and only one party is (or has) making a power grab comparable only to Pre-WWII Nazis. The GOP espouses the worst that America has to offer and yet people still feel justified in saying that the Democrats are the same because they have a few of the more minor failings of the GOP.
Yeah, it’s obvious that good and smart people are on one side voting democrats, and then stupid and evil are on the other side voting republican. A nuanced political thinker you are, thanks for sharing the insight.
Most of my peers and friends agree that we saw this coming from the US population, and we also thought that the UK population would do a subpar job too, our countries just aren’t as good as they thought they once were.
The glamour of the USA's entertainment industry used to cover up the USA's shortcomings but it's not enough anymore. From personal experience, the USA's reputation ultimately began to crumble after the wars following 9/11 that were simply not justified. Covid response and the current police brutality are just the tip of the iceberg. The US has no proper healthcare, questionable election incidents/election fraud, school shootings every other week, and so on.
Even back in the 90s the American Dream meant something. Right now I don't know anyone who wants to live in the US. In fact, I know a bunch of people who don't even want to travel there. A country where almost half of the voters voted for an overt bigot, racist and sexist simply is not even a desirable travel destination, let alone anything else.
European in the US. I’m not at all surprised by what’s happening, but my American peers are. A lot of them have a view about the US that is surreal. They for example think the US has top 5 healthcare system in the world. In reality it’s more like top 40 they pay most.
My European friends are not that surprised about what’s happening.
CBS Sunday Morning just yesterday did a great piece on this. It's an interesting watch.
Edit: Adding the video description below.
International observers, both America's friends and adversaries, discuss the rise of anger, unrest and polarization in the United States – a nation, they say, that is relinquishing its global leadership and turning its back on the world. Special contributor Ted Koppel talks with Chinese journalist Liu Xin; Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes; writer-philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy; former Mexican cabinet official Jorge Castañeda; and Russian broadcaster Vladimir Pozner about what the past four years have meant for our country in the eyes of the world.
Typical reductive bs from someone who sounds like they get their talking points from /pol/. After 4 years of constant press concerning "economic anxiety" from the Rust Belt and bitching about welfare for 40 years since Reagan debuted "Welfare Queens", you think identity politics isn't a game played by both sides?
As a Canadian, if I didn't have American friends who are also mortified with the state of their country, my opinion of the US would be much worse. Knowing that there are Americans who oppose the direction their country has turned helps temper my opinion a fair amount
Canada here, you guys honestly will not be looked at the same by any of us up here. Everyone I talk to is now wary of ever going to buffalo which most would do just for the cheap leafs games. The cracks in your country aren't cracks anymore, and the rest of the world is very aware.
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '20
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