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Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong I love america for being the epicenter of western culture and its innovation - I even plan on living there for some years

Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong I love america for being the epicenter of western culture and its innovation - I even plan on living there for some years. I feel alienated by my own German culture with its weird lederhosen, mozart and the general sentiment for illiteracy regarding all things digital. As far as I know americans think "God" created (or blessed or whatever) their holy country and its the greatest nation on earth. There is the classic american patriotism. The pledge of honor (and that kneeling thing??). Almost half of americans (or at least a very large Marjory) are creationist and believe angels are real. Even some of your presidents do. There are actual fights weither or not evolution should be taught in schools. Your relationship with Religion is also borderline pathological. There are studies that show higher developed countries tend to have atheist or at least agnostic leanings but the US is an outlier here. Your irrational war on drugs is a disaster, it, together with your racist history of slavery and segregation causes your cultural critical problems with your minority communities. Your police acts like there in a war zone. Your media is a shit show of of people throwing mud at each other. If you ever learn german you should watch the Tagesthemen which is the most unbiased and informative news I have ever seen in my life. Alternately I think french24 comes close though I'm not sure. Your relationship with guns is a whole other story as your own students can attest. I can understand the attraction to guns but Jesus you behave like an alcohol addict saying its only medicine. Some other worthy mentions are your commercial prison system that gives you the highest incarceration rate worldwide. I also heard many times your Judaical system highly disfavors the financially weak but I don't know much about that topic. You also have a "fat" epidemic as I have heard. Also your education system is kinda bad and too expensive. To close it off - your politics are highly polarized with borderline retarded conservatives that call everyone soyboys on the one side and don't even get me started on the social justice warriors that took a University president hostage[1] and in general know nothing else but to scream loudly. Cooperation oligopolies are gaining too much control and you see anything remotely welfare related such as the obama health care or free universities as communism. Btw. education is gonna be the most important field in the future. With rising demand for high skilled jobs poor people are not gonna have it easy. So free universities aren't that bad of an idea (and yes obviously they are not free but paid for by the tax payer). Also german A-Level History Lessons are of extremely high qualities so we know all about our past and what lessons that brings with it. One of the most important skill I learned in School was in History where we learned to critically analyse any kind of source. It kinda makes you immune to bullshit media of all sorts. EDIT: I didn't read the source, it was simply the first google match and I just put it there for reference. 1 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was-being-sought-police-tell-professor-avoid-campus-protesters-seek-h https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was...

gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
You say you're immune to bullshit media, yet you link zerohedge, and your entire view of things here (at least culturally) seems to be based off of sensationalist media and things said on reddit etc. I've never heard the term 'soyboy' in real life, most religious people are pretty nice, in fact most people aren't even religious to begin with, most conservatives are reasonable, 99.99% of gun owners are responsible. I think you're wrong about America's 'relationship with religion' being pathological. In fact, Utah (the most religious state probably, and pretty advanced) has almost no homelessness. Contrast that with the most liberal/atheist states and it's pretty much the opposite. So, the church can play a positive role. That said, religion isn't actually relevant in many parts of modern US society. As for guns, I think its a mental health epidemic with a bunch of columbine copycats, rather than a strictly gun issue. I could say that Europe has bad relationship with trucks. The war on drugs is a disaster yes. The prison system is a disaster. The fat epidemic is a disaster (I blame corn syrup aka corn subsidies and car culture), but there are some pretty dang fat people in Europe too. Education quality depends on the state, but the northeast (MA, CT, NJ) has some great public schools. The political divide is a disaster. Healthcare "policy" is a disaster. The US is so large and diverse that states act more like european countries, each with their own stereotypes and policies. For example, gun culture is non-existant in the northeast, yet in the west and south it is very prevalent. I mean, in NYC carrying even a folding knife is illegal, yet you're probably considered weird if you don't have one on you at all times in other parts of the country. In the EU, you have Greece and Switzerland, but they couldn't be more far apart culturally and even financially. Europe does a lot of things better than the US, especially with infrastructure (new infrastructure - our old infrastructure is awesome we just haven't been investing in it for the last 30 years due to the small government conservitard meme). Overall QOL is probably higher. As for what you do worse, a lot of EU states are nanny states with very high taxes. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of upward mobility. Salaries are low, but there is still inequality. You don't pioneer much.
- lostcolony 8y ago
  Just as a fun aside, the 'housing first' model that UTah adopted...was done first by LA and NY back in the late 80s/early 90s. Also, Utah has plenty of homeless. What they've reduced (to 1/10th of what it was) is -chronic- homelessness. They still have 14k people per year spending one or more nights in an emergency shelter each year ( https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2017.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201... , page #35), which is essentially unchanged since before the 'housing first' model was adopted. What is especially interesting is that due to the inter-state differences...raw homeless numbers aren't really that telling. That is, places that are friendly to the homeless tend to have more homeless. Which...makes sense. Even Utah despite its housing policy, is not considered particularly friendly to homeless people, and there is some evidence that people leave the state when homeless ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-city-homeless-people-missing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-ci... ). I basically mention this to point out that UTah isn't quite the shining beacon on how to 'solve' the homeless situation as they were touted a few years ago..and that at best their religiosity is irrelevant to that.

gnarcoregrizz 8y ago

You say you're immune to bullshit media, yet you link zerohedge, and your entire view of things here (at least culturally) seems to be based off of sensationalist media and things said on reddit etc. I've never heard the term 'soyboy' in real life, most religious people are pretty nice, in fact most people aren't even religious to begin with, most conservatives are reasonable, 99.99% of gun owners are responsible. I think you're wrong about America's 'relationship with religion' being pathological. In fact, Utah (the most religious state probably, and pretty advanced) has almost no homelessness. Contrast that with the most liberal/atheist states and it's pretty much the opposite. So, the church can play a positive role. That said, religion isn't actually relevant in many parts of modern US society. As for guns, I think its a mental health epidemic with a bunch of columbine copycats, rather than a strictly gun issue. I could say that Europe has bad relationship with trucks. The war on drugs is a disaster yes. The prison system is a disaster. The fat epidemic is a disaster (I blame corn syrup aka corn subsidies and car culture), but there are some pretty dang fat people in Europe too. Education quality depends on the state, but the northeast (MA, CT, NJ) has some great public schools. The political divide is a disaster. Healthcare "policy" is a disaster. The US is so large and diverse that states act more like european countries, each with their own stereotypes and policies. For example, gun culture is non-existant in the northeast, yet in the west and south it is very prevalent. I mean, in NYC carrying even a folding knife is illegal, yet you're probably considered weird if you don't have one on you at all times in other parts of the country. In the EU, you have Greece and Switzerland, but they couldn't be more far apart culturally and even financially. Europe does a lot of things better than the US, especially with infrastructure (new infrastructure - our old infrastructure is awesome we just haven't been investing in it for the last 30 years due to the small government conservitard meme). Overall QOL is probably higher. As for what you do worse, a lot of EU states are nanny states with very high taxes. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of upward mobility. Salaries are low, but there is still inequality. You don't pioneer much.

lostcolony 8y ago
Just as a fun aside, the 'housing first' model that UTah adopted...was done first by LA and NY back in the late 80s/early 90s. Also, Utah has plenty of homeless. What they've reduced (to 1/10th of what it was) is -chronic- homelessness. They still have 14k people per year spending one or more nights in an emergency shelter each year ( https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2017.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201... , page #35), which is essentially unchanged since before the 'housing first' model was adopted. What is especially interesting is that due to the inter-state differences...raw homeless numbers aren't really that telling. That is, places that are friendly to the homeless tend to have more homeless. Which...makes sense. Even Utah despite its housing policy, is not considered particularly friendly to homeless people, and there is some evidence that people leave the state when homeless ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-city-homeless-people-missing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-ci... ). I basically mention this to point out that UTah isn't quite the shining beacon on how to 'solve' the homeless situation as they were touted a few years ago..and that at best their religiosity is irrelevant to that.