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> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the n

> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. For many in the US, the opinions of Hollywood and the major news outlets are equally inaccurate and irrelevant. Consider that the US is more comparable to the EU as a whole than any individual country in the EU, and a lot of things regarding US politics start to make more sense.

User23 6y ago
The United States is best viewed as 50 little countries. Culturally Louisiana is as different from North Dakota as France is from Sweden. Our federal government is increasingly powerful, but State sovereignty isn't just a paper promise. The States retain significant real authority and can effectively rebuff the federal government if the political will exists. For better or for worse though, the power of the States has been on a downward trajectory for over a century. Nevertheless the strong fiscal, monetary, and military union between the States has been hugely beneficial in most respects. The EU on the other hand is broken by design[1]. It appears to be largely forgotten now, but the framers of the EU were well aware that monetary union without fiscal union was unsustainable in the long term. They, perhaps unwisely, assumed that reasonable compromises would be reached in relatively short order. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastri...