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I agree and know all about the diverse make-up of the U.S. population, however culture is about what is in your mind rather than about the blood that runs through your veins.
On this, the poster is absolutely right: the U.S., though obviously not a carbon copy of the U.K., is fundamentally an anglo-based culture.
The same goes with music, all the way from nursery rhymes to modern popular music.
And with movies as well - if an average American has seen a non-American film in his/her lifetime, it is probably a British movie like The Full Monty or Four Weddings and a Funeral, or an Australian film like Mad Max. Few German-Americans will have seen Der Untergang and few Polish-Americans I gather have ever seen (or even heard of) Quo Vadis.
This is the case because English is the lingua franca, and therefore the US, followed by the UK, are the most ardent exporters of culture. A lot of the same could be said for Swedes or Germans or Japanese people - outside of their own culture, they'd be much more keenly aware of American and/or British cultural exports, sometimes, they might be even more aware of those exports than their country's own cultural output.
Canada is by far most like the US...one of the reasons the Right leaning folks hate it so.......
All the ethnic peoples that settled here in the US also came to Canada , maybe more so as relates to overall population. In one word or two , Canada is what the US wishes it was , socially liberal , fiscally conserative...it works.
the US it was Canada wishes it was - what an utterly deluded post.
BTW, Canada is not fiscally conservative, and the US is not socially liberal. The cultural output that the US offers is far more liberal than Canada's.
Even with the founding fathers of colonial Australia and colonial USA are different as the founding fathers were considered convicts in colonial Australia but the founding fathers in the colonial USA were Puritians even though they both were from England originally.
Australian culture also develped its distinct self identiy as it would to as its isolated from the rest of the world so its not like the USA either.
The founding fathers were not Puritans. Puritanism died out (at least in any coherent sense) before the 1700s. The colonies were made up of Protestants, Catholics, and agnostics.
I think there are significant cultural differences btw the US and Canada/ Australia/ New Zealand.
We were founded mainly by people interested in either making lots of money or seeking religious freedom. Like other colonial areas (Latin America and South Africa) we have a history where some people live in luxury while large numbers of others (esp racial minorities) live in abject poverty.
Australians call each other "mate" because they view their society as being one of equality. In American society people try to find their niche group and dislike other groups. There may be a sense of equality within the group but not outside it. I list the groups as being rich suburban Whites, poor rural Whites, poor inner city Blacks, middle class suburban Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians (<- often associate with upper class Whites). Generally rich and poor Whites immigrated for different reasons, the rich for money and the poor for religious freedom.
Americans (esp the Eastern half) are much more religious than Australians and Canadians. Attendance of religious service at least once a week: US 35%, Canada 17%, Australia 14%. In that regard we compare much closer to Latin America and Africa.
1) We are not similar to Latin America and South Africa. We have always been historically richer than Australia and Canada.
2) Your second paragraph is set on a ridiculous premise (that Australians calling each other mate is any more than a friendly greeting, like "bro" or "bud/buddy" or "dude"), and it's mean-spirited and wrong. You're merely naming demographic signifiers of certain people in this US as prove that people in the US "dislike other groups", which is a determinedly negative depiction of America that isn't true at all. Canada and Australia tend to be much more provincial.
3) America is less religious than Latin America by a lot, and weekly church attendance is definitely not that high in America. The percentage of religious Canadians is about 67%, compared to 72% of Americans who identify as religious, which is much lower than Brazil or Mexico (90%+ religious). So again, wrong.
canada is like the us minus the crime and hate lol
mexico is like the us plus some crime
japans like us minus crime and plus tech, trains, brains, good flow, rich... nevermind japans not like us lol
The US is richer than Japan, the US has trains, the US has way more global tech companies, what does "good flow mean", and there's no "hate" in the US - which is why the US grew to 350 million people and few people, comparatively, decided to move to Canada.
I'm still not sure why there's so many people abjectly lying about the US, pretending it's the literal opposite of what it actually is (the richest country in the world, and a country that's maintained a very high living standard for longer than any other) to downtalk it. Is anti-American insecurity really that severe?
There is no way Brazil is more like than the USA than Canada. Language, sports, architecture etc etc are all more similar in Canada to the US than Brazil.
And Brazil has no colder areas like the midwest or the northeast of the USA where are large number of Americans live and most Canadians live adjacent to.
Okay, but you're cherry picking elements, not considering the whole. Brazil doesn't have colder climates, but Canada has no warm climates, and the US does. There's more crucial elements to be considered for a country comparison than sports. Canada has huge blocks of French, which isn't similar to the US either. Architecture isn't appreciably different between any of the countries, aside from the fact that the US has a lot more of it than either.
Most Americans live in the sunbelt - where the population is highest.
Demographic makeup, beach culture, comparable cultures when it comes to food, dance, and music, more similar governmental systems, as well as more comparable sizes in terms of population and geography, make Brazil much more comparable to the US than Canada is. Canada is too small to be able to compare.
Granted, Canada is very similar to the US in a lot of ways, but it doesn't strike me as the most similar, on balance. Canada doesn't have a large population of enslaved black people, or a multiracial tradition like those two countries do. They don't have the same dynamic racial history, or history of revolutions.
Followed perhaps by UK and Australia esp. due to cultural interchange.
Brazil would be a close third along with the likes of France
The likes of Ireland, New Zealand, Benelux & Germany would come next.
Canada just isn't very similar. Outside of the ways in which American culture (or pop culture) has entirely diffused into the Canadian way of life, it's too small to compare, it doesn't have a comparable history, it's not as climatically varied, it's food, music, and dance cultures aren't similar, it has the problem of the French language block, making it particularly unlike the US, it hasn't been influencing culture that much at all, it's demographically quite different, it's not a comparable hard power...
The fact that the English Canadian accent merged with the American one is an argument for the two country's similarities, but that's sort of the only reason people think Canada is so similar to the US. If all of Canada was francophone, I guarantee you, everyone would be arguing for the all of these points, saying that Canada couldn't be further from the US.
Followed perhaps by UK and Australia esp. due to cultural interchange.
Brazil would be a close third along with the likes of France
The likes of Ireland, New Zealand, Benelux & Germany would come next.
Australia is too small and demographically incomparable. It's not historically or culturally that similar at all. Ireland is absolutely, incredibly unlike the US. The Benelux regions are the same. They're too small in every way, population, geographic size, cultural footprint, hard power...
Canada just isn't very similar. Outside of the ways in which American culture (or pop culture) has entirely diffused into the Canadian way of life, it's too small to compare, it doesn't have a comparable history, it's not as climatically varied, it's food, music, and dance cultures aren't similar, it has the problem of the French language block, making it particularly unlike the US, it hasn't been influencing culture that much at all, it's demographically quite different, it's not a comparable hard power...
The fact that the English Canadian accent merged with the American one is an argument for the two country's similarities, but that's sort of the only reason people think Canada is so similar to the US. If all of Canada was francophone, I guarantee you, everyone would be arguing for the all of these points, saying that Canada couldn't be further from the US.
it depends where in Canada you are from. West coast, like Vancouver is a whole lot like California......Where Winnipeg is a whole lot like many Midwest areas in the US..........I know what I am talking about,lived in both countries , coast to coast. These days , I pick Canada as the place I want to be......too bad the boarders are closed. ( I do not blame them ether )..
it depends where in Canada you are from. West coast, like Vancouver is a whole lot like California......Where Winnipeg is a whole lot like many Midwest areas in the US..........I know what I am talking about,lived in both countries , coast to coast. These days , I pick Canada as the place I want to be......too bad the boarders are closed. ( I do not blame them ether )..
There are notable differences, ethnologically, pop culturally (music and film heritage), in terms of cuisine, history, sporting heritage, military presence, architecture, climate and geography, economy, etc, between Vancouver and LA or San Fran.
Similarly, Winnipeg is also ethnically, culturally and pop culturally, climatically, architecturally, in terms of size and scale of it's economy - way different from midwestern cities like Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, or Cincinnati.
And this is still just cherry picking examples.
Are the two countries very similar? Yes. That's why Canada is 3rd on my list.
Is Canada the most similar to the US? No. It's too small, it's not similar in an ethnic sense, it doesn't have a comparable history or form of government, not as many comparable regional identities, there are notable discrepancies between Canada and America's regional cuisines, accents, dialects, and identities, Canada doesn't have the same liberal creative tradition to match the US's music, dance, film, literary, art, and fashion industries, it doesn't have the same level of hard/soft power, many regions of the US have very different climates than what Canada has, some of the architecture diverges, the beach culture isn't as present, the overall national characters are different (a much more British staid-ness in Canada vs a much more widespread gregariousness in the US, more rugged individualism and entrepreneurialism in the US), etc.
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