| 598 mass shootings this year in the US on 18:04 - Nov 17 by HARRY10 |
I think the mistake many make is that having the US speak in a mangled, reductionist form of English must mean they have the same mindset and values as us. They do not.
Their's is a weird almost totalitarian approach to much. Where else in the west are school kids required to salute and sing the national anthem before school. Only in Japan is ancestry worship equal to the US's reverence for ex servicemen and woman.
Where else in the west would such a ramshackle, expensive and inefficient heakth service be tolerated. In fact strongly defended.
The fetishisation of personal armaments] points to a deep seated neurosis, where the police are regarded by many as an occupying force, and all too often behave as one.
Strife and hatred over religion still affects a number of Balkan states, whereas in the US it openly exists but is based on race.
And finally outside of the western and eastern coastal belt there is a helluva lot of ignorance and stupidity.... and at the risk of upsetting the righties on here... fatness. Bloated people grossly over weight. Compare the sizes of people in the 1970s even with what you see waddling around today.
They are different to us, very different. |
Our kids went to school there and didn't have to salute and sing the national anthem. They did raise the flag, but that's as far as it went. They did get a free proper (cooked) school breakfast every morning though. And had a school for about 70 kids that we would have easily fit 300 into in this country, with class sizes of 12-14 instead of 30-35.
The health service was top class (I used it, and was seen immediately in A&E by a team of docs). It was a million times better than ours in terms of service. The issue is affordability and access.
Guns seems to be an issue on political lines. Our host and neighbours didn't posses - but yes, there's definitely a problem.
No open racial hatred where we were (but that was in lefty-bumfest Maine).
The main difference I noticed was their can-do attitude and resilience. Maybe that's again because of where we were in rural Maine. They didn't whinge about things, they just got on and did them/fixed them/made them happen. It was quite an eye opener. Need a barn ahead of winter? No worries, just get your neighbours round and build it for the price of a couple of barbeques and the beers. |  |
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