Little difference, big world

2013-11-13--1550

This has been doing laps on the internet recently – it’s an interesting view on what hosts of stereotypes are propagated about Americans. Many of these may be unjust or untrue (or not really general) but a few are spot on. When I go back home, or travel around, here’s what I keep having to explain to folks back home.

Not everybody here eats at McDonald’s all the time.

This is a huge place; much more diverse than many folks may be accustomed to thinking. If you know Brooklyn or Cedar Rapids, you only know one place, and that’s one small patch on the quilt.

Not everybody is clueless about discordant foreign policy.

The legal barriers to owning guns are probably lower than you think. The fraction of folks that actively use this right regularly is probably lower than you think.

No demographic, rich or poor, considers themselves having fully attained financial stability.

Nobody can afford to rely on an existing system that secures some basic level of functioning – everything is subject to risk.

Donald Trump really exists. Tom Cruise really exists. A guy you may not have heard of – Warren Buffet – really exists. And poverty and homelessness really exist as well.

In many ways, the contrapositive is just as interesting – what do I have to keep explaining to Americans about folks living in Europe?…

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