Why do some Americans "feel ashamed" for being American even when it's not their fault?
from DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 30 Nov 02:42
https://sh.itjust.works/post/50718429
from DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 30 Nov 02:42
https://sh.itjust.works/post/50718429
For Context: I’m Chinese American, and I do not feel “ashamed” for my heritage, neither do I feel “ashamed” for being a US Citizen.
The CCP is not my fault. I do not feel any shame of saying I’m from China.
Similarly, the trump admin is not my fault, I voted Harris. I do not feel any shame for being American.
So what is the thought process of people feeling shame/guilt?
#nostupidquestions
threaded - newest
China has been China-ing for a while, we get it. America’s actions are relatively fresh, and a majority of us DID choose him. While I’ll immediately reassure people that I didn’t vote for him, the fact that I have to separate myself from what’s going on comes from a sense of shame over that.
That said, if I met a Russian I wouldn’t necessarily hold the invasion of Ukraine against them… But I might have to ask if they really support that shit.
Considering voter turnout is ridiculously low in America the majority of us did not choose Trump. Just less than half of those that voted did which is 32% of the population. Also, Trump was not exactly the start of American decline, it is more like he is a symptom of it. A reaction to it if you would. American has been a violent an oppressive nation that we should be ashamed of for roughly 250 years. Trump is just very good at making that obvious.
Not voting is a vote for the winner by default. I highly doubt that every single person that didn’t vote did so due to being unable to.
Every comment like this pretends that our elections are based off the popular vote, and not the electoral college.
But over a year later, liberals still blame non-voters instead of their party for running unpopular candidates.
And voter turnout was good in swing states btw. Granted, I think Trump cheated.
China has been eliminating poverty for quite some time. In fact, over the last 70 years, China accounts for 80% or more of the entire global poverty alleviation gains. The US has created more poverty in that same time.
But also, the US has been racist, violent, colonialist, jingoistic, misogynistic, and white supremacist since it’s founding. You know those propaganda images DHS posts on Twitter? Those are from the US’s time of westward expansion. This isn’t new. What’s new is that we have given up on trying to hide it, which is something we did for for the last 70 years. But even in the 40s we had concretation camps, we had open racism in all of politics, we had the second largest Nazi group in the world.
And after WW2? Operation Paperclip? Operation Gladio? The US openly staffed NATO with Nazi officers. The US openly advocated for Nazi politicians to lead West Germany. There were literal Nazis running West German after the war.
And then of course the Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Irag wars. The Afghanistan war. The embargo against Cuba. The coup in Iran.
This is what the US is. Nixon banned heroin explicitly to imprison black people. We have slave labor producing billions of dollars in value annually. And we punish our prison slaves who don’t work by giving them solitary. All of that is massive gross human rights violations, things we’ve pretended to invade other countries for.
This is who we are. It’s not new.
At the risk of being annoying as shit, that is not true. The only fresh part is that Europeans and/or white people are feeling a small part of the heat too.
was just going to say this. anyone who thinks this is new didn’t pay attention in history class, or that history class conveniently glossed over or romanticized our many, many atrocities.
American education has always been a complete shitshow. Recently I realized that I never actually knew anything about the war of 1812 because the extent of what was taught to us in fucking NY was like a single page in a textbook. Unless you took AP you didn’t learn shit.
I’ve learned more about it now, I’m just pissed that my education didn’t actually cover jack shit.
It’s by design
I don’t think public education is meant to make people informed, one of it’s goals is mass indoctrination. It’s the same in almost every country. I’m fortunate to be one of the people that recognize that. Me being in two spheres of influence make it so easy to identify what propaganda looks like, I seen it on both sides, two different countries, how media, like tv shows, portrays things.
They want obedient people to keep the cogs of the machine running. They want nationalism and absolute obedience to the state, the government.
In the US, at least, there are a lot of reliable sources on internet, and also public libraries… but of course, poor people don’t have time to educate themselves, just as its designed. The lower class, different countries, similar story.
Is there a sub-collegiate history class that doesn’t?
Ok, a majority of voters, not a majority of us, but as another commenter said if you sat this one out you basically helped the winner and I’m absolutely going to blame you for it
Plurality of voters, didn’t get more than 50% of all votes
77m voted for Trump which is 32% of the voting age population.
As a percentage of the overall population it is ~23%.
It’s not shame so much as deep embarrassment for the current state of our country. We look like fucking morons on the world stage. Thankfully we will move on from this stage in our history, but the stain may remain for decades to come.
The only sort of solace to this, is that many other countries are clearly following the same path, so its not something inherent to just the US. Idiots are everywhere, and they vote.
Everyone is pointing to the US, but the same initial precursors are happening under their own nose.
False equivalency.
How is it a false equivalency? It’s the same exact people astroturfing the movements in those places too. It’s literally the same phenomenon
Oh look a Canadian that can’t see their own descent into the far right fascist rabbit hole on the horizon. Somehow even watching the US, you seem to still be headed that direction as if it couldn’t possibly happen in Canada. Because… reasons?
i hate when people shit on the US but don’t acknowledge any sort of solutions to put in their own country to avoid this situation
The easiest solutions to the US problem are already solved in most other western countries. That’s why the US is the first (and at this time, the only one) that turned fascist.
Legal guns are uniquely a US problem. Having a system that only allows 2 political parties is a uniquely US problem. Limitless (in the billions!) political donations is a uniquely US problem. Relying on the stock market for retirement is a uniquely US problem.
I’m not saying that the rest of the western countries turning fascist is impossible, but it’s much harder. Most fascists are contained to their fascist political party. So until there aren’t enough fascist individuals, they can be mostly ignored. Of course, once they are enough fascists, the fascist party will inevitably win, and there’s nothing that can stop them at that point.
A multi party system over time (decades or centuries even) turns to 2 parties, then turns to one. Corruption only speeds this up.
Ranked choice voting (shout-out !fairvote@lemmy.ca) is a pretty good solution
I agree on the guns tho
That only happens in the US because of first past the post system. In European countries new parties with significant vote share are created all the time.
In fact, in my country the opposite of what you say happened. First we had a dictatorship with a single party. Then democracy came and we had a 2 party system. No we have 4 major parties, in addition to some minor ones.
Canada has voted against the populist right for the last decade. And each time the Conservative party chooses some one more right wing. And each time they get a bit closer to winning.
Trump galvanized people last time, scared them away from the right. This time he seems to be inspiring the right wing politicians, and people live it.
I don’t know if we can hold out much longer.
While agreeing for the most part, it’s painfully clear as someone in the EU how politics in the US empower far right rethorics everywhere else. While politicians in my country have condemned the actions of the US, the political landscape has shifted dramatically.
Everyone is pointing at the US because their politics trickles down into ours, not the other way around.
Any idea when? I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead before I see it.
yeah i never expected an answer to this.
Honestly, in this situation it’s likely more performative than an actual feeling people have. It’s a good way to acknowledge that someone isn’t happy with the impact our country is having on the world.
Emotions aren’t entirely rational with a clearly thought out process to justify why one should feel them. In any case, its common enough for people to assign the general actions of people within a group to the group as a whole (which isnt really fair or a reflection of reality, but can be pragmatic at times and requires less thought and information than judging on an individual basis, so it makes sense that people’s brains are wired up to do it even if its not always desirable). This can get extended to the groups one is a part of oneself, to include those whose membership one did not choose. And the US at the moment has even worse than typical leadership, has a great deal of power for that leadership to abuse, still has free enough media for people within it to stand a good chance of knowing about at least some of it, and if youre here on lemmy youre probably running into people with a somewhat higher than normal awareness of a lot of the historical abuses previous Americans have perpetrated just because it leans left and anti-establishment and those things get talked about a lot in such spaces.
I feel that way but because I’m human.
We are not good people.
I believe the shame stems from the moral injury we all suffer when we peacefully stand by in a democracy and let bad people control the government and inflict serious harm on innocents
So in some respect it is in fact all of our faults because we do in fact sit by and watch people die so we can respect the democratic process.
Similar question pointed at you. I now understand it’s wrong(though not sure why), but when asking an Asian American where their ancestors are from, they get offended and proudly point out that they’re American. Why would you be proud to be an American? Or was I just a few years early in thinking that way?
I mean, a person from the western world is not gonna view this the same as someone from a non-western less-developed country.
Like, I know people shit on the US a lot, and perhaps it might be “the worst” in the Western World. But compared to globally, it’s far from “the worst”.
Like, if you gave a North Korean PRC Citizenship (which does not really happen btw, just a hypothetical), then the Now-Former North Korean would probably be proud to be a Chinese Citizen rather than being in North Korea.
Because it’s relatively better by comparison.
So its the same with me. Sure, I know there are far better countries like Norway, but I mean like… Norway does not take many immigrants, and the best place I could be, given my circumstances, is the US. So, it’s less about “I’m proud of my government” or “I’m proud of the history of this country”, more like “I’m glad I’m here instead of [their ancestral country]”. And as to getting questioned, its the fear of getting “othered”, of getting rejected. So its natural to immediately declare their US Citizenship status as a defense.
I mean, I think nowadays, that’s even more so the case.
Like I didn’t really worry about this before. But especially nowadays, if someone, especially someone claiming to be a cop, is trying to talk to me, the first thing I’ll do is immediately declare my Citizenship status and then assert my rights immediately after.
I still have memories of China, and I do not like being there. Not every Chinese American is gonna feel the same way as I do, but, at least in my case, our life in China prior to emigrating was very poor, and it got better in the US. So there’s that.
When’s the last time you were in China? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a pushed social media post, but it seems like every city I’ve never even heard of in China looks even better than the best city America has these days. I get wanting to announce your citizenship in defense, but it does seem like it’s in, well, defense. Like how Cuban immigrants were cheering their love for Trump, then got deported anyway. Is it just thinking the leapards wouldn’t eat your face? This, again, bring me back to, why be proud of this? It does just seem like a forced defensive shut-up-and-smile kinda deal. Oddly enough, very much North Korean :/
Around 2010. Guangzhou.
The actual city part doesn’t look too bad, but I lives in a slum neighborhood of Guangzhou that most tourists don’t really see. It was very dirty and you go through narrow alleyways. Like, according to Baidu Maps, its a 10 minutes walk from the main street, in my memory, it always felt like a 20-30 minute walk for some reasons, it felt so distant, the walk was always boring af. It’s as if through through that short walk, you time travel back in time 20-50 years. The school I went to was the worst school I ever went to. Even worst than the shittist American school I went to with a rating of like 4/10 looked better.
Although, it could’ve be my Hukou issue. The school I went to was not a public school, it was one for children of migrant parents that parents have to pay for. Kids without Guangzhou Hukou were not allowed Guangzhou’s public schools.
So far, the worst places I’ve stayed at was the small apartment in Guangzhou, and the ancestral homes in parents villages in Taishan.
I mean, China looks so great? Sure, only if you are privilaged enough to live in the good parts, which my family wasn’t able to. In China, most people have homes in their villages, but if they wanma find work, they’d have to go to cities, and then they’d have to rent some shitty apartment. Landlords are still a thing, but they don’t call them 地主 (di4 zhu3), but instead 房东 (fang2 dong1), people “buy” (not really “buy”, more like 70 years permission to use, but you get what I’m saying) housing, then lease it, kinda profits off it.
In Guangzhou, we were second-class residents.
China isn’t really one united country when you really think about it. It’s a bunch of different countries with different internal passports in a trench coat. Y’all can leave your red state shitholes and go to a blue city, in a blue state, and you are treated as any other resident.
In China, my ancestors are from Taishan, so I’m always a 台山人 Taishanese due to Hukou, even though I was born in Guangzhou and speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.
I’m just embarrassed as fuck
To the point of being furious…
One word:
Tribalism.
It’s shaming to see people and institutions you were proud of and bragged about being the best, then devolve into something the rest of the world laughs at.
I think it’s those who are tricked into thinking their votes are really determining government things who would directly feel at fault for america. Lot’s of us know we are nothing more than powerless blobs whose only hope is for WW3 to just happen already so America can be forcibly changed.
Did they fulfill their civic duty? Did they meaningfully fight to defend their cause?
If they fell short of their own expectations, they’ll feel shame.
They’re pretty tightly wound tbh
American liberals would sooner say that the nation is impure than that nationalism is pathological. Many of them literally identify with the state as part of or representative of themselves. Guilt and shame are American rationalisation staples, “I feel bad, but I’m not going to stop.”
So for anyone keeping score at home:
This is exactly what OP is talking about. Instead of answering the question with anything even remotely resembling a nuanced take- we have instead, decided to make an uneducated blanket assessment of an entire group of people based on zero evidence and a lack of qualifications to make such an accusation.
For example, I am an American liberal. And everthing they said doesn’t even come close to describing my stance on the issues of nationalism or how I feel about my take on personal political representation.
But one should never let this get in the way of a good ol’ blanket statement! Because nothing says “no need to take anything I say seriously” any louder than this.
Exactly. Well said.
Get this, they responded to me saying that checked my profile- and apparently saw that I somehow equate leftists with liberalism and because of this, I don’t know shit, so they blocked me.
I don’t think I’ve ever put the two in the same bucket.
I saw that. A lot of people out there think they are really smart and also that we care that they think that.
Jesus how dramatic. Please explain liberalism for me so that I know what I’ve gotten wrong here.
edit: checked their profile, they think liberalism is “leftist.” Politically illiterate liberal gets mad at the read. Blocked.
LMAO.
They checked my profile, found that I’ve never once said liberalism is leftist, and created a reason to back out of the argument.
You can’t make this shit up.
And they blocked me? Well, some gifts just wrap themselves, don’t they?
What a helpful and fair comment that is absolutely not dripping with smug self righteousness. So refreshing!
What’s “righteous” about this?
You pretend to be any better than the millions of random strangers you don’t know or understand but criticize anyway.
Where do I say that? I understand American liberalism intimately, btw. People can actually know things and also think you’re wrong.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c81ef0a9-0e11-47dd-a2e8-ba536a57278d.jpeg">
Jesus, I see that word so misused on here but someone using it when I ask where I said something two comments above is pretty hilarious.
Lol I know how this goes. If you had your way I’d still be quoting you and attempting in vain to argue an obvious point 3 hours from now. We can just skip all that.
My personal answer is that people, particularly left-of-center folk from other Western countries, want us to feel like it’s our fault. The way they talk about us.
I don’t truly believe it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t internalize it.
When the rest of the world hates you for shit a minority of your country did, but succumb to generalized thinking and blame all Americans (looking at you, Europe), a guilt complex can be internalized.
Hating every American or having prejudices like believing every American tourists are obnoxious is bad.
But saying you hate what “America” is doing is fair, because the Country is represented by its political class
I’m from the US but left to live outside it. I will NEVER FUCKING EVER call myself an American, much less a proud American. I’ll call myself a NYer because I owe most of who I am to that state/city, but I am ashamed about the country I grew up in and absolutely do not want to be associated with it. The US government has only ever caused me and my people harm.
Why is it not our fault? Shouldn’t we be responsible for our society? If you’re not responsible for your Society then what incentive is there to change it? We should feel guilty. America’s only the way it is now because we all failed.
It’s a sort of in-group cringe.
I feel deeply embarrassed about being from the US. It’s like hanging out with a group of friends out of necessity, later realizing they were all assholes, and trying to come to terms with the fact you spent so many years with them. I live outside the US now and I’m even more embarrassed to be from there. Every time there’s some culture shock my takeaway is either “wow how did I normalize this broken aspect of the US” or “I wish I was from somewhere that didn’t do those things to that person’s country”.
I also feel embarrassed and guilty over getting out of the US. I worked in tech and now I’m living off tech savings to start a life outside the US. I left my friends behind many of them are struggling financially, I left my community behind many of which are actively homeless, I chose to leave. Sure I’m leaving in part because my trans ass is on the chopping block but I see a lot of trans people fight harder instead of flee. I fought for so many years though and I couldn’t keep doing it so I left. The US did this to my community, made me confront choices I never wanted to make, I’m disgusted by having paid taxes to the war machine, and I justify working in tech as a way out of there but really I feel guilty over choosing to buy into that side of the US too so I could secure personal safety.
Please don’t feel guilty for leaving somewhere you don’t like. That is your right. Stay safe, friend.
Don’t feel guilty for seeing the signs and getting out whilst you still can. Millions of people throughout history haven’t been as fortunate.
Once Trump and Project 2025 is done with immigrants you can bet your arse the pendulum will swing onto LGBQT people in earnest
Not the pendulum. The gunfire.
Living in the USA myself, I feel shame at how I normalized and rationalized the horrible aspects of this country. I’d already been a minimalist and was anti-consumerism from before I was an adult; but I had downplayed the severity of our systemic violence until it hit me personally. Above all I wish I was doing more to fight this system, like the people you described.
For as long as I am alive I will stay in the USA. I’m not going to give up on holding out here, as miserable as I’ve felt this last year. I’d like to believe something I do may someday inspire others who are braver and have more resources to do something more concrete.
You have nuanced take on things. That’s a rarity here on lemmy. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a few of the lemmunists show up to tell you how your take on China is entirely wrong.
And speaking of nuance- the overwhelming lack of it here is pretty much the answer to your question.
Strangely, people seem to hate when blanket definitions are used to describe them, while also seeming to love using them as a weapon against others when under the Manufactured Outrage spell.
For instance, I too voted for Harris, and I’ve been called a gEnOciDe suPpOrTeR, a bOoTLiCkEr, and. bLuEmAga™. Just for voting against a fascist.
Looking for a nuanced take here is like looking for it in a gradeschool classroom. It’s best not to take any of it seriously.
The hatred between left leaning Lemmy users over the last election is crazy to me. Instead of focusing on getting rid of the current fascist regime together, so many just dogpile on anyone based on whether they voted for Harris. I feel like every other political post has a flame war that starts with a comment blaming the news on anyone and everyone on the left who didn’t vote Harris or criticized dems during the campaign.
There are those of us with a bit of nuance though. I was and still am disgusted and disappointed with the Dem’s positions and empathize with those who sat out in 2024 but I voted Dems them over the party looking to fast track fascism and white nationalism. I regularly get flamed for suggesting we move on from blaming each other and focus on getting rid of the fascists here and now.
I think for some people the only way they can think of to help is attempting to bully someone over the internet, and it ends up applying to whoever happens to be around that disagrees with them, even though that makes zero sense as a strategy.
Yeah I get why people have talked shit to you. It’s flat out not fuckign acceptable to have withheld a vote from harris to make some statement which will never be heard. What they did was see Hitler rising and said their little tantrum was more important than trying to stop him. But here you are trying to justify that when no one asked.
Thanks for the demonstration.
jIlL sTeIn 2028!!!1
If someone calls you bLuE mAgA then that probably just means you are smarter than them.
That’s how I take it as well.
Hmm… So these posts are now coming up on lemmy. Seems like lemmy is getting on the radar for some mainstream narative control.
Adding that “chinese” bit is a nice touch.
Let me steal all your shit and then give it to my children and then disappear. I’m sure you won’t mind, right? and you’ll let them have it, cause it’s not their fault.
K thanks, Bye!
I grew up in Indonesia, my sister is from Java, my brother is from Singapore. I’m natively from California, and I’m a huge white boy. I am ashamed that the country of the free, the country of the brave who had bounteous arms to welcome the downtrodden and abused of the world is no longer that place. Instead it’s the land of the secret police, tbe land of a pedophile traitor president who can’t stand any kind of criticism because he’s a fucking coward who dodged military service.
My family settled here in 1630. I don’t feel shame about being american, I feel dread at the resurrgence of barbaric population control as opposed to compassionate capitalism and universal basic income for all. My entire childhood and participation in civics was a temporary era not the foundation of a beautiful future.
I look at my children and want to apologize to them for what they’ll endure after my demise. What a way to wake up…
I’ve been watching the sopranos lately and the answer is because I’m secretly in the mafia and the Italians invented everything
Non parliamo con nessuno al di fuori della famiglia della nostra cosa
Because other people will blame you regardless, so it makes you wish you could avoid even telling them
Anyone who has been embarrassed by a family member knows.
I don’t have pride in my government or its actions.
It was actively causing a lot of harm for most of its existence and is now turbo charging its ability to enshittify the world.
The LEAST I can do is make it clear we’re not all in support of this shit.
Love the country and people though. Lots of cool forests to roam and lots of people who don’t suck.
You don’t have to be at fault to be ashamed.
Because it is their fault.
I haven't felt very patriotic or proud of my country in over 25 years, since I began to slowly understand politics and how things worked within my country. I feel that after everything I've read, everything I've heard about, everything I verified myself by researching and everything everyone has gone through in it with the bads. You can say my control stick has been snapped off and I'm permanently unpatriotic and ashamed to represent my country, knowing the damage that has been done internally as a country and externally everywhere else in the world.
I know it's not my fault, I just do what I can, I pay my taxes knowing it's being pissed away, I work jobs I didn't like doing to feel like I'm contributing despite it not being ultimately worth it because I am helping sustain the motion of this unworthy country. I have voted Sanders, Sanders, Harris in my voting record. And still, the assholes won in the end. But then I feel like, that shit doesn't matter because our track record as a country has shown that the system is in favor of said assholes if they're cunning enough to take advantage of them and that's what we've witnessed many times.
All the while knowing that half of the population in this country, is dead set in taking the rest of us down with them in every negative decision made. While still trying to tell us it is our fault.
Well this last election really broke me from thinking of myself as an American. I just happen to live here.
Because the truth is our democracy is managed by oligarch propaganda. And our votes mean very little outside of local elections.
A vote for Trump and a vote for Harris were both going to continue the harms of the MIC and the fossil fuel industry. Yes, Trump is an accelerant. And I voted not to add gasoline.
But the fire was going to burn one way or the other.
Anyway, I think folks that feel ashamed still believe that their voice matters. Which is by design of the political and business class.
With all of the attempts to dismantle voting booths and artificially mess with the results every freaking election, why even bother voting anymore?
It's like we tell the naysayers about voting as to why voting at all in America is pointless. But they still cling to some hope that they're heard. Well guess what? When a candidate can still win by Electoral College despite the popular majority, that alone tells you how little your little voices mean. When an election can be won by stupid points.
I feel similarly and to expand a bit its more the fact that second time around electing this fool proves that that majority of Americans are either horrible people or useful idiots which is incredibly depressing to know with certainty. For me, first time around was a fluke, second time is reality. I’m exploring citizenship elsewhere as a backup plan.
We were raised with “pride,” not necessarily racially or ethnocentric, but a broader sense that transcended such boundaries. I grew up in the 80s-90s in the midwest, and we were taught America was a “melting pot” of cultures, ideas, and races, and that we should look forward to a time when whites are not the majority because the lines will fall away, the average color will be brown as we all mix over the next generations, giving us less reason to fight. And we should look forward to it, because that’s been our story so far - broken, impoverished immigrants came here looking for opportunity, and found it through hard work and smart thinking, and then became a part of our shared tapestry. We were taught to be proud of this, that we were stewards of this tradition in the best, most advanced country in the world.
And now, well. The basest instincts of people have been brought to the surface and America now stands as an openly white nationalist, isolationist, fascist-tinged autocracy where the ideals I grew up with seem long antiquated.
So yeah hard not to feel ashamed of what’s happened to our shared identity in just a few decades.
Ain’t that the truth. We were supposed to be better than this and we were supposed to be improving
I dont identify with my country. Im just a resource so they can collect taxes. I think their decisions are stupid and childish but its like watching babies trying to build a house.
Best you can do is to focus on your own life.
Lol that’s why my parents say to me. That trying to change anything in politics is pointless, futile, that, in a hypothetical revolution, I’ll never get to live to see such a hypothetical victory…
I mean I kinda get it, my parents don’t want their kids to die in some war…
Direct action my friend. Unionize, participate in mutual aid, opt out of their economy as best as you can. Wars are won by supply chains, not by dead idealists.
There’s a huge difference between being ashamed of your Government’s actions and behavior and being ashamed of who you are/where you were born.
One is a valid criticism of the ruling class ignoring the people’s desire for peace and social responsibility. The other is a mental health issue much like some people who are ashamed of the race or gender they were born as.
I get attacked by people unable to separate this conflation because I encourage people resistant to our government to pick up the goddamn American flag and wave it. To have some measure of pride in the institution we live in so others take it seriously when we demand improvement.
That’s not really “shame”, not really the right word for it, shame is something you feel about yourself, this is more like resentment.
I genuinely feel like a lot of people don’t think very much about their feelings or where they come from, and end up with really mixed-up or inconsistent values.
If you ask a lot of Americans why they feel the way they do about their country, negative or positive, they often become irritated or upset because most people just tie a lot of associations and emotions to other concepts and words. Which is fine, that’s how brains work. But I think if you’re involved in a democracy you should have some level of actual thought towards how you feel, what you want from your country and who should be representing those values. I can’t get people on either side of the political spectrum to care about any of that shit… which is why China will probably have the solar system in a generation.
OMG I just had a thought.
Remember what happened when Great Britain expanded and colonized stuff? 13 colonies?Independence?
OMG wouldn’t it be cool if China did that to like Mars, then the Martian colonists be like, “no fuck you CCP”, then:
Declaration of Independence
United Provinces of Mars
Constitution (hopefully a smarter constitution)
Martian Revolution
Becomes a Solar Superpower
Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the solar system.
Time is a circle lmao.
Literally just The Expanse timeline, but without blue goo and Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the UN. LOL
FOR MARS!
火星联合众国
Look, whatever you have to do to keep Elon out of the place, I am fully supportive.
Seriously though, I was watching a documentary on the International Space Station a few days ago and listening to how this major network was hyping up such a “huge American engineering challenge” and “doing the impossible as the world watched on” and I couldn’t help but grumble “China has made three stations in half the time and those are just practice for an actual series of much bigger projects.” Literally, America gets almost NO news on progress and achievements outside of the USA.
This is kind of the plot of Armored Core if you also made it a cyberpunk corporate dystopia.
I think it becomes shame because we recognize we’ve benefited from the system that has shit all over so many. Even indirectly, it’s hard to think about all the ways I’ve benefited from - just to say one thing - all the cheap open land (places like texas, nebraska, oklahoma, OR & WA) we got after putting the natives in concentration camps and murdering most of them.
Like, I try to enjoy a national park but then realize: this was someone’s home. Many peoples, in fact. We took it, put up gates, and charge people to harass the animals. And that’s the places we’ve saved from industrial pollution and factory farming.
Because I look at my country and what it’s done and feel insufficient for my failure to keep it from doing stupid and evil things.
Also the European and Canadian frustration with America and Americans is understandable, but it has an impact especially when you still think highly of those places and their people.
Speaking only for myself: because the American government has, for 250 years, claimed to act on behalf of the American people. When it was liberating concentration camps and sending people to the moon, that was something to be proud of.* When it was upholding slavery and winking at Jim Crow laws, it wasn’t.
It’s a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and so he purports to speak and act on my behalf. That’s deeply embarrassing and shameful, even if I couldn’t have done anything differently to prevent it.
* (Yes, I know that even those “good” examples are complicated. I’m just forming an example here)
American tech companies created algorithms that happen to boost videos and news articles of fringe/extreme occurrences that take place here. The mainstream news networks also prioritize content like that, for the same reason: It’s very profitable. Boring news/content just doesn’t make much money.
People who have never visited the US seem to have a very distorted understanding of what everyday life is like here. We display a pretty embarrassing caricature of our country for the world to see.
And to make things even more embarrassing, we made our government ridiculous, and made our politics become pop culture (yet also very tribal) over the last ~15 years.
Because we live here enjoying the fruits of all the evil/bullshit/indifference without doing enough to prevent shit or change shit (probably underhandedly excusing people doing nothing about it)
The whole I’m not at fault thing is believing the big lie. “I didn’t commit the crime myself so does standing here and watching it happen really make me morally responsible?” Yeah it absolutely does. Its reasonably easy to help and your just unwilling to inconvenience yourself morally, mentally or physically.
Simply EXISTING here enables the machine that makes all the evil happen, and we feel that. And, without you accepting that being ok yourself, that would change and we are aware of that. But taking yourself out of that requires not enjoying life as much as other people or “everyone else” as it is sometimes thought
So its because people feel like they are taking advantage of the situation with our cheap goods made by slave labor and easy lifestyles built on the backs of 10,000 poor people and we figure we shouldn’t be doing that. Kinda morally reprehensible no matter the justification we sell ourselves you know?
So, the situation sucks and yeah, that makes some people feel bad about all that (if youre not an ostrich person burying your head in the sand so you don’t have to feel ashamed that is)
I don’t know about others but I imagine for a lot its just guilt by association. I’ve definitely been feeling it for a while.
I also think a lot of people feel bad about their tax money going into the pockets of so many evil people for so many evil purposes. One of the reasons I personally stopped paying taxes. I wish my fellow Americans would join me on that end, but it isnt easy.
in my own case, it’s that I’ve (not intentionally but still) benefited from a system that subjugated others (natives, people of all colors, and women) to secure the national infrastructure I’ve directly profited from. Everything from education, clean water and housing, to medical care often shockingly focused on what ails and heals white males. And the sickening knowledge that the same ones who want to deport taxpaying workers who rarely benefit from the enormous amounts of money our country throws around are the same as me, living on land stolen from the people who lived here, who we basically exterminated. Finally, we use the trappings of a pseudo-democracy to declare all men are equal, but really, they mean wealthy heteronormative white men, because otherwise you’re the other and disenfranchisement should be expected.
That’s-just-the-way-it-is? only if you accept it.
Part of the social contract in America (at least… this is what I believed growing up here) is that we all kinda share in this thing we all have going. Like, let’s say we get into a war. The government can (and does) ask citizens to join the military and fight and the reason that works is because we all kinda implicitly signed off on it. Yeah, sure, you had nothing to do with the country getting into a war. But because you participated in government, in the system, because we run this thing (nominally) by the standard of democracy and consent of the governed, everyone owns at least a small part of the responsibility for the country’s actions. In the case of a war, that might look like joining the military and “doing your part”. More commonly it looks like paying your taxes and still “respecting” the government, even if it’s not the one you voted for.
Now, like I said, that’s more than anything what I felt when I was a kid. Speaking personally, I’m in a very different headspace now as it relates to governance. I also feel like generally speaking all that’s shifting, though I’ve very little to back that up save… gestures at the past couple of decades of American politics.
More to your question however, I think that the kind of social contract I laid out above kinda explains some of what you’ve asked. Even if you want to say it’s purely performative, that’s fine. But the fact that Americans are “asked” about how they should be governed implicitly puts the idea in our heads that we’re responsible for what our country is doing. It’s not just “some dottering old idiot at the top of the org chart decided this thing”, it’s we. America is doing this thing. Even if the truth really is that some dottering old fool made a decision out of personal ambition or greed. We get it drilled into our heads from a very young age that this is our government. And no matter how much you try to distance yourself from that… it still irks you, somewhere in the back of your head.
Maybe, at some point before I was born, that was expressed as a point of pride. I could see some folks being proud of what America was or what it stood for, once upon a time. Now though? I find it hard to believe that that mindset could find any other expression but shame. And weirdly, I believe that’s true regardless of what your politics are. Different reasons are at play there depending on what your politics are, of course. But lately it feels like everyone’s got some grievance against the government. Some reason to feel ashamed about what “our” government, what “we” are doing. Whatever that thing is for you, you don’t want it being done in your name. But the central trick of American “democracy” is that you don’t get to just walk away. Whatever is being done is being done “in your name” whether you want it or not. And it’s been that way since before you were born.
A tangentially related correlate here is that I feel like a lot of Americans don’t feel represented by their government anymore. I certainly don’t feel that way, and I haven’t since Obama was president. That was roughly back when I was young enough to uncritically believe some of the views I’ve expressed here. Things have changed a little bit. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because part of what I think is going on is that the social contract is breaking down along the lines of nobody feeling like the government they have is actually representing their interests. Maybe, if this goes on for long enough, the social contract will change into something different entirely. Maybe this “shame” we all seem to feel will turn American society into something different than what it currently is, if it’s given the time to do so. But, I can’t really read the tea leaves on that one. All I know is things just can’t keep going the way their going. Something’s gonna break eventually.
Because it collectively is our fault.
If you are from China then yes, the CCP is partially your fault.
Americans are embarrassed for how America turned out, because they know they are supposed to have influence over their government.