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I would add that a lot of what Americans read as "criticism" can be explained by a heady combination of incredibly poor reading comprehension and a lifetime of being spoon-fed humour with a laugh-track.
The amount of angry, abusive reactions to posts that are clearly a joke is hilarious in itself and just makes us wind them up even more
A corporate owned platform is not going to expose you to viewpoints that are against its interests. Lemmy is more inline with the actual state of the world as you are talking to other humans.
Sure at times we many not like what we hear but that is ok. We all need to hear other viewpoints, it is how we grow. Its not a personal attack and if you think about it being critical of a government is good, people should want their government held accountable and working for the people.
It is also not about red vs blue or any of the other bullshit labels . None of that matters, you are more like the average Russian than your leaders. Most people just want to get on with their lives with as little bullshit as possible. As for loyalty to the nation, I like Einstein's answer here.
Viereck: "Do you look upon yourself as a German or as a Jew?"
Einstein: "It is quite possible, to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
I am from Europe and I am highly critical of the US as they are a bully, They are not some moral do-gooders that the movies paint them as. They have military bases all over the place and have meddled with so many countries. They are an empire.
"The U.S. has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States
As for the platform aspect, do you think Twitter or facebook and the rest have been a net positive for humanity ?
Sure there have been positives but there have been massive negatives such as
For the record I am critical of my own government too where it makes sense but they do not invade other countries.
I honestly think there are definitely, if not bots, agents/feds that come on here and really push to radicalize people.
As someone who is generally pro-America, pro- capitalism and pro-liberalism (as in, classical, not today's fucked version), it's really interesting to converse with people who are just as crazy as the "God is King" types, just flipped on the modern versions of conspiracies and bad takes.
HALP: This social media platform that isn't owned by a US corporation is not suppressing criticism of the US enough!
You can always go back to your safe space on Reddit or Facebook or whichever corpo US social media site.
Have you seen America lately?
The US bullies nearly every other nation on the planet, they also bully thier supposed friends. People have little option with a bully aside from vociferous push back.
You're right that the US is strong, they way you deal with your disputes is violence, or implied violence.
Look at the ICC where they will hurt the judges becase they have an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu to investigate war crimes but were all ra ra when the Court did the same for Putin. The US has an invade the Hauge Act if the same court investigates any US citizens for war crimes
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law
Lemmy is more geographically diverse then many places online, so perhaps instead of taking umbrage, listen ?.
Your question contains hints at where you're coming from.
At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better
You look at the criticism and you think they're simply people being jealous or something, that's not it at all. To be fair I'm not sure about what criticism are you seeing constantly, but the ones I've encountered mostly reflect my own criticism of it, e.g. the worst health care in the world, terrible education, abismal class gap, blatant racism, police brutality, overspenditure in military, school shootings, etc, etc, etc. Let me be absolutely clear, the US is NOT stronger than any developed country in any of these, I've lived in places with terrible healthcare that I would not wish on my worst enemy and they're still leaps and bounds better than what you guys have.
But, we don't see them do that with other targets, just the US.
But we do, the difference is no one is making posts claiming Russia is a better country and that's why people criticize it. And most other countries accept their shortcomings, take it from the thread a while back from what people in the US need to hear and the similar one for Europe. Every single one of the answers on the US had someone saying that it was just jealousy, or that it wasn't all that bad, or that that was better than the alternative, or one guy even tried to tell me that his city had none of those issues. On the other hand in the EU one most of the answers were more akin to "you're right, this is something that's really bad here".
reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.
Let me be extremely clear here, Fuck Russia, Fuck China. For all of my criticisms of the USA it is still a (very weird and indirect) democracy. So if I had to choose between those 3 I'll take the USA every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Luckily I don't, and I can live in a country without any of the issues I see there and express my opinion on how poorly the USA treats their citizens (you have to keep paying taxes after moving abroad for crying out loud) in the same manner I would express myself against any other country doing the same.
Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.
Most of the criticism I see re for what the US is doing NOW, not in the past.
Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just
I don't think that's what the majority is doing, there could be a few people like it, but for the major part I think people recognize that the USA is a a "decent" place to live, especially when compared to Russia or China. But what you need to understand is that it's not the greatest country of all like you think, most of us would not move there unless we were offered ludicrous amounts of money.
EU and Russia on the same team lol
No one in Europe believes that, in fact you can still see plenty of Ukrainian flags around.
West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)
If you think MAGA is pseudo-populism I would hate to see what you consider as real populism.
The short answer is that you're probably not used to people telling you the US is not all that great, so you see that as an attack, and you think that because people criticize you that means they are trying to make others hate you, but I think most of us are just pointing your shortcomings because a lot of you act like very entitled narcissists who think there's nothing wrong with the USA so obviously those who speak against it must be puppets.
TL;DR: criticism of the USA doesn't mean there's nothing good there, much less is it an endorsing Russia or China. But you don't need to tell narcissists what they're doing well, they'll tell you themselves.
as an american, i whole-heartedly support anti-american sentiment. we fucking deserve all of it. we voted in a clown shitshow of a government and of course the world should laugh
came to write something like this. feel the exact same. we don't need to post the election results to am I the asshole because we are not the assholes.
And this isn't even the first clown shitshow of a government we've voted in this century
of course. and dont forget the whole fucking over the globe by forcing our version of democracy everywhere. or that our biggest industry is generating human killing devices we spread across the planet under the guise of 'defense'... or that our country was founded by genociding almost an entire continent of humans.
i find it beyond funny that we support israel because 'they were there first', but if you mention that maybe the american indians should rise up and take their country back you get very different responses. america is the land hypocrites.
I don't think we're the only land of hypocrisy out there (like, listen to Russia talk about how they're the real protectors of human rights, or China say other countries are threatening their national security, or Mexico complain about cartel violence while letting their police do whatever they want, or Israel do so much shit I don't know where to start), but, yeah, a lot of us are brainwashed as hell, and our government is completely full of shit whenever it's scolding anyone else about human rights, international law, the climate, etc.
i find it beyond funny that we support israel because 'they were there first', but if you mention that maybe the american indians should rise up and take their country back you get very different responses.
Yep, and also the fact that there's such a vocal anti-migrant movement here after almost all of our ancestors in immigrated here is completely absurd
The first one wasn’t voted in. The first one was decided by the Supreme Court.
As an outsider (not american and don't live in the US) I just want to add that I'm not "anti-american". The problem is that you guys built a "bully" reputation while at the same time we see the hardships the regular american have to go through without healthcare, education and labour laws, and nobody really cares.
Nearly half the electorate didn’t vote for the reactionaries. I’d also add that this regression isn’t an exclusively American phenomenon, we’re just unfortunately at the vanguard.
find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better
🤦
Are you for real? And you are surprised US and USians get criticised?
I'm less worried about the anti-American tendencies than about the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese ones.
Most of the anti-American sentiment I've seen on SM over the last 2 or 3 years has been from Americans. It sucks here unless you're rich, racist, and/or incredibly stupid.
As someone who would probably qualify as one of these anti-American Americans on Lemmy I can say this: A big factor for me is the despair I feel (having genuinely believed the myths for most of my life) as I see the facade falling away. The genuine awfulness and inhumanity of not just our government, and our economy, but also of the culture, the people themselves, is just overwhelming. These forums are one of the outlets I’ve been using for my rage. I can only speak for myself. I’m not a bot, or a Russian actor, or an edgy teen. I’m a disillusioned middle aged American.
I'm allowed to complain. I live here.
American here. When you elect a man—twice—whose character and policies have led to a fractured nation, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and a healthcare system that leaves millions behind, it's no surprise that the world views us with disdain. When your citizens are struggling to afford basic necessities like rent and groceries while a handful of individuals hoard wealth that rivals entire nations, we’ve earned every ounce of criticism.
Buckle up, because the descent into this nightmare is far from over. The worst is yet to come, and it's going to be a long, suffocating fall.
Don't forget one of our largest cities is currently on fire because of our own man made climate change that we are (I believe) the number one cause of, but those same leaders are telling us to shrug and say "who knows why"
How insanely American to think America being criticized a lot must mean propaganda.
Lemmy.world may have the least of this since they neolib gobblers
I'm American. I love where I live. There's a lot of great people, food, experiences, and places. It's a vast place where a lot of great, forward looking things happen.
However, the government allows billionaires to control it and prevents it from serving its people. We are fucking angry.
I'm American. I'll jump on the criticize America bandwagon any day!
So, no, we suck in the worst possible ways. That is really all there is to it
strong tendency to criticize the US
The whole world has been criticizing the USA since I was born 50 years ago. All I remember is that their way of life is declining all the time, they lied to go to war with Irak, and now they elected Trump, which makes is worse.
someone somehow found a way to criticize the US in it
I can say the reverse. All the time I see Americans talking about the USA in conversations where it is not the topic. What do you think about this? Like someone made a pizza in a random Asian country, and the whole conversation will switch to how NY pizzas are the best.
they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents
You're paranoid. It's the internet, it's global, everyone criticizes everyone else. As for causing chaos, you elected one of the most disgusting felon who exists, the chaos is already there.
You mean lemmy, the platform created and maintained by staunch marxist-leninists? That lemmy strikes you as anticapitalist and antiAmerican?
Weird.
I was listening to NPR a few days ago and they were talking -- in the context of Jimmy Carter's passing -- about the global community having to grapple with two different sides of the United States. The side that is incredibly generous and has contributed an enormous amount to the welfare of people throughout the world and the side that is a basically a bully that uses it's vast power and influence as a means to further it's own selfish interests.
Both of those things can certainly be true. The US has contributed a lot of positive things to the global community and at the same time, the US is effectively the most powerful and sophisticated empire in human history. Empires cannot maintain their power without oppression. Over the last 249 years, we have created some truly horrific disasters, at home and abroad, in the name of acquiring and maintaining power. That deserves criticism no matter who's doing it.
Fuck the US hyper-centrism. If this place was so anti US, why are all the communities titled "News" and "Politics" exclusively for discussing seppo shit? This place is less US-centric than other platforms but is still extremely US focused. If you look for more than a second, you will find anti-russia, anti-china, anti-israel and anti-germany shit too (just to name a few). Finally, I just want to say, fuck the United States of America and everything that that hellhole represents. I am sorry that you have to live there
Welcome to a non US centric platform. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit,Digg, etc are all US centric platforms so there will be a pile-on when US criticism is mentioned.
Lemmy.world is not a US centric instance so you don't see the pile-on. You get actual opinion on an over represented country.
I honestly feel like Lemmy got considerably less vitriolic toward Americans after the election.
I used to think Lemmy was too insignificant for Russian influents, but I'm not sure anymore.
I'm American and the main reason I don't aim the same criticism towards other countries is that I'm American and don't know enough about them. Maybe some people are agitating for malign purposes, but how much does that matter to a responsible netizen? No one knows who anyone is - maybe idiot takes are made by idiots or bad actors, it doesn't change much. Lastly, one quote stuck with me after the last election season : " the reactionary is always right about what is wrong but almost always wrong about what would be right"
You are describing tankies. Not everyone who criticize the US is a tankie. Stay away from lemmygrad, hexbear, lemmy.ml, and you'll see legitimate criticisms of the US.
Well, I'm a real European who is not a fan of the US. Not to the point where I'd prefer Russia or other dictatorship shitholes, but it's like having to choose between getting kicked in the balls really hard and getting shot in the head (just for context, I'm not one of the people who enjoy being kicked in the balls).
Every sane person in this situation would choose getting kicked in the balls, but that doesn't mean you're really happy about it.
No
