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I apologize - the title should be North America, but this is how the article has it (because I think it was meant to be read mainly by North Americans), and I can't find a way to change my thread title.
Startling? Eye-opening? Roden plz. These are the same negative facts and stereotypes about America and Americans (no need to apologize, we are speaking English, and ths is the correct demonym for US citizens in English) that we cant escape hearing about even if we want to.
We are fatties.
We are dumb, dumb, dumb.
We love cars.
We all believe Jesus is gonna come save us aaaaaany day now...
Even our diversity sucks.
At least they threw us a bone by acknowledging that while we are poorly-educated, superstitious gluttons, we somehow lead the world in publishing scientific research papers...
I wonder how many Russians believe the moon landing was faked? This is a popular "crackpot" theory in places where people have skeptical-to-negative views of Americans and no warm fuzzies about the culture.
Some of these are not stereotypes. We are the most obese nation on earth, we do rank low when it comes to science and math, we do have abysmal health care in this country (although it is somewhat better after Obamacare), and I can think of a few others, like being the most litigious nation on earth as well.
You may think this is old hat, but believe me, there are people in this country who think we are the best at everything, and we're not. This is posted for them.
You can't begin to work on fixing things until you admit the things that need fixing exist.
And you're trying to say we're not an illiterate third world mess? OK, maybe we're not down that far ........ yet. But we're almighty close to being there.
Nice thread. More people are renouncing their citizenship and/or moving abroad than ever before. It's definitely time for people to take a good, hard, and long look at getting out of America.
I don't think these facts are "startling," at least in the sense of being a surprise. I think all of these points have made the news in the past (sometimes repeatedly) and probably have been discussed here in many threads. (I would grant that they are probably willfully disbelieved by many people.) However, the U.S. is far from being a Third World country...it has quite a way to go.
My own feeling is that the entire world is doing a massive pivot, so I don't believe reversing any of these items is something that could be accomplished - presto/change-o - by the U.S. as if the country were not part of the world. World changes and world affairs will impact on what America is able to do, even with measures it regards as internal/domestic. Nevertheless, where the country is deficient (any country for that matter) there should be an effort to improve the situation, but such changes may be far more complicated to achieve than in the past....and "going back" is a delusion.
America has yet to face a profound basic contradiction in its society: All forms of group cooperation and support are despised as socialist (which is evil); yet the roots of such traditional supportive connexions, such as family and friendship, are shallow and individual satisfaction and pleasure are thoroughly entrenched as the supreme good by the culture.
Some of these are not stereotypes. We are the most obese nation on earth, we do rank low when it comes to science and math, we do have abysmal health care in this country (although it is somewhat better after Obamacare), and I can think of a few others, like being the most litigious nation on earth as well.
You may think this is old hat, but believe me, there are people in this country who think we are the best at everything, and we're not. This is posted for them.
You can't begin to work on fixing things until you admit the things that need fixing exist.
And there are people in this country who think that we suck at everything, hence threads like this.
The article is frought with misguiding information. For instance, the stat about America being at the bottom of the 11 wealthy nations list in healthcare, the list stops at 11 because that is where the US stands. It very conveniently leaves out nations like Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Japan, and probably a half dozen other rich nations that sit squarely below the US in this ranking. This is done to paint the US in a bad light. Of course only a dunce would fall for this.
I don't think we suck at everything and that's not why I started the thread. But one of the things I don't think we do in America is learn from the past. And part of the reason we don't learn from the past is because people think we're so wonderful that we have nothing to learn. A little humility in America wouldn't exactly be a bad thing.
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