America being largest producer of ‘culture’ and having such a large geopolitical influence means that lots of countries compares itself to it. Because of its cultural hegemony most people know what’s broadly going on in the US, this means that any criticism of your country is dismissed or lessened by ‘at least we’re not America lol’.
I live in Australia, if you discuss adding dental or mental health to Medicare for example, people will inevitably say ‘at least we aren’t America’.
In the Queensland election news coverage on the ABC tonight, the analyst mentioned how great it is that the election results are accepted and it’s it’s just another day in democracy, as opposed to the US where everyone is prepared for the election to be contested and there’s voter suppression. While this IS true, and I do appreciate living in a semi-social liberal democracy that functions closer to intended, this detracts from the issues we have, discourages improvement and makes people feel complacent and smug.
Thoughts?
EDIT: the police is a good example too, if you critique the police you’ll often get a response like:
‘come on mate, our police aren’t that bad, not like in America where they shoot every black person they see, and sometimes even non black people(!) just for the heck of it, and they get of scott free, shits fucked there mate we got it pretty good aye. AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE.’
Germans do this all the time. Imagining that all Americans are fat and stupid and always carry McDonald's and an AR15 makes us feel sane, competent and relevant. There's a newer Simpsons episode where German backpackers live with the Simpsons and they just keep pestering Marge with what's wrong about the US, they just keep rattling down point after point like "problem nr. 34, no public health care, problem nr. 35, no metric system, problem nr." and it's so fucking true, both what they say and the smug, condescending delivery that's so routine that it's obvious how deeply that disgust at the ugly American is baked into our culture.
On the other hand, we're completely dominated by American soft power - probably moreso than other non-Anglo Western nations, because our own cultural industry got so irreparably damaged by the nazis that we had barely begun to build it back up when pop culture as we know it today began to form. American bands where automatically considered cooler than German bands until wayyyyyy into the 90s, for example. Turns out it's hard to build a large rock scene when you've literally sent your jazz scene to the camps. German film and tv productions still lag behind the US standards, even 100 years after all the incredible talent in Babelsberg fled to Hollywood. I could say similar things about literature, painting, architecture. One consequence of fascism was that culturally, we went from cutting edge to nothing, and that vacuum was filled with the massive output of the American entertainment machinery. There's a reason the CIA sponsored foreign tours for jazz musicians in the 1950s.
I have no idea where i'm going with this, so :amerikkka: :germany-cool:
It's always crazy what people who fled the Nazis and their descendents achieved later in life.
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It is. But it's also a national pastime here to convince each other that we are now much smarter and morally upright than that (we aren't, btw).
The US (I don't think it's the CIA anymore, but it's still the state) still sponsors foreign tours for jazz musicians. In practice they mostly play shitty pop music. They call it "Freedom Tours" or something like that.
I think you need to look to the West for a country more dominated by America