Comparing European countries to the United States seems like an idea that could improve, but people still try. Making fun of other countries you don’t live in and can’t understand is a questionable way to spend your time. Generalizing what people are like without ever meeting them is not recommended. Forum members at a fashionable Internet forum tried to guess why this keeps happening.
1. Change My Mind
People have preconceived notions about a lot of things. They may have yet to travel, or they might like a specific type of music and not be willing to have an open mind about what other kinds of countries or musical artists offer. As one person pointed out, they have an opinion and don’t want it challenged, so the music they listened to in their youth is always better than new music, and their country is better than any other.
2. Location, Location, Location
Others were annoyed by the tendency for people to call themselves European and not be specific about the country that they live in. They insisted that people stop hiding behind Europe as a concept and reminded them that there is a war in Eastern Europe right now. Europe is a continent, not one big nation.
3. In Comparison
But what is it like in Eastern Europe versus different parts of the United States? A Bosnian man said he had emigrated to the United States and visited forty-nine of fifty states. In his opinion, the Balkans, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia, were safer than the United States, and his wife didn’t experience some of the problems she had in the U.S.
4. To Be Fair
Is comparing certain U.S. states to other places in the world fair? One respondent doesn’t think so because that kind of comparison is “comparing the worst that a place has to offer” as a rigged contrast. Cherry-picking the most notorious states in America to compare with relatively affluent places in Europe is setting America up for failure.
5. Getting a Reaction
People could make these comparisons because they want to provoke a reaction, usually an angry one. Nationalism is a factor in many countries. People feel the need to build their own country up as the best place in the world, and what more straightforward way to do that is there than to downgrade other countries that they see as “better.”
6. Is It a Mentality?
Human beings like to create categories for everything. Classification of different things comforts them, and complicated issues and differences make them uncomfortable. Users stated that the United States is far too complex to reduce to easily digested bites of information. The Deep South, for instance, defies easy quantification.
7. Anger Is Real
Do Europeans spend this much time thinking about the United States and dissecting its problems? Wisely, a commenter wondered if these Europeans were angry about other things and felt the need to stir up trouble on the Internet. Sometimes, the Internet amplifies the meanest voices.
8. Teaching the Internet
An educator had something to say about this issue. They stated that comparing the educational systems in the United States and Europe annoyed them. It is one of their pet peeves because there needs to be more understanding of the differences between American and European cultural nuances, demographics, and histories.
9. Transportation Systems
A favorite way to compare the United States and Europe unfavorably is to compare their respective rail transportation systems. A commenter pointed out that in those comparisons, no one ever shows population density maps on those train routes.
It is only a reliable comparison with all the data, including low population density in the midwest United States versus the high population density within European countries. While the differences between the train routes might seem egregious, they must reflect the real issues with the U.S. train systems.
10. Sweden Versus Alabama
It was interesting to see someone compare Sweden and Alabama to show how ridiculous such a comparison would be. For example, winters in Sweden are much colder and more severe, and Sweden has twice the land size of Alabama and double the population.
In addition, the government of Sweden is much more concerned with the welfare of its people in the categories of education, criminal justice, and its decentralized, nationalized healthcare system.
This thread inspired this post. Â
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