They glorify soldiers way too much and teachers way too little
Between the two there is a big difference:
One is a profession that can be a particularly dangerous way of life. Orders from above put you into place far from support, with limited resources, often in contact with hostiles on a daily basis. You’re often left to fend for yourself with only what you have on you against overwhelming odds. Command structures often pit you against your peers in petty internal politics around rank. The pay isn’t great, and those that stick with it for the long haul to make a lifetime of it often leave scared and mentally injured. It can be a thankless job in putting your life and health on the line to achieve the overall goal.
The other profession usually involves wearing a uniform and enforcing USA’s geopolitical interests in other countries.
Ah, the old
RedditLemmy switcharooHold my bulletprove backpack. I am going in.
Hello, future people!
U got me in the first half not gonna lie
Your comment made read the other comment.
Worth it.
It was good but I saw it coming right away lol.
A family friend of ours just quit his highschool teaching job and is moving his family because he was threatened with a gun in his classroom. The student was expelled, but not arrested and knows where he lives.
I fucking hate it here. Guns need to go.
As an American, it confuses me as well
You poor thing, maybe if your teachers were praised more you’d have been taught better and be less confused.
Feel free to enlighten us, O wise one.
I have no idea, I’m just sympathetic to the plight of confused Americans.
Well you’ve certainly confused this one. Though I suspect you’ve confused some Europeans as well
I was attempting to be humorous; obviously that failed. Surprisingly it doesn’t seem to be apparent to many as to why America glorifies soldiers rather than teachers so I guess I’ll elaborate.
Glorifying soldiers is a nationalistic practice designed to distract from the very real cost of war I.e. the death of young men and women to protect capitalist interests.
It’s a tactic to encourage impressionable people to join ‘for glory’ or prestige when in reality there is very little of either. First hand accounts of literally any war will tell you this.
You could use this same tactic for teachers but historically teaching is seen as a ‘woman’s’ job and so the existing value structures of our society preclude this profession from the same veneration. I.e. the patriarchy is why teachers aren’t glorified in the same way.
Tipping
Also, losing their shit over nudity
While having a huge porn industry.
We have tipping in Europe, but that’s mostly only done if you have a very good experience, not because you are expected to. Just pay your employees.
The obsession with mutilating baby boy’s penises.
As an American I don’t get this either. You want to cut on my child’s penis the day after he’s born?! The fuck? Who says yes to that?
America was founded by shrill religious fetishists…
The whole Guns thing
Guns are the only reliable way to deal with tyrants. And while its not everytime, look at what happens to disarmed populations usually.
Also gun control started as and still is racist.
You had a tyrant that tried to overthrow a legitimate election through violence.
Where were all gun nuts then? Those who weren’t attempting said coup, that is. Doesn’t sound reliable to me.
As for what happens to disarmed populations, most of Europe has gun control laws that would make any American have a heart attack, and yet here we are, no dictators to be seen up to GMT+3. Do say, what is it that happens to disarmed populations? What is happening to us that I somehow didn’t notice?
And gun control being racist… I’m sorry, what? This right here, this is the thing I’ll never understand about Americans. Everything is racist. You can’t talk about anything, somebody will play the “racist” card before you can get any deeper than slogans. Absolutely every single thing turns out to be a race issue. Sure, you guys had very big issues with racism until very recently (learning about sundown towns for me was a huge WTF moment) and it’s very hard to deal with a past so ugly - but still, maybe not everything is about race.
In America, gun control started as a way to disarm black people. Worked out well when the Klan wanted to lynch someone. Thats what was racist about it.
Keeping your gun accessible when driving your car. Needing or wanting to open carry when you go shopping. Needing to pose with your family all holding powerful guns for a Christmas photo. I don’t get it.
Most of America doesn’t do it, just the people who are afraid of violence - which also happens to the same people who would quickly resort to violence. At this point, seeing a person wearing a gun is the same as seeing warning colors on other species like insects. If you see it, turn and go the other way. There is literally nothing worth the inconvenience of dealing with those people. (And hospitals don’t allow open carry so matters of life and death can be attend to without worry.)
A modern analog I like is to high grade digital encryption.
Terrorists and criminals use it, and governments want to ban it. But that doesn’t actually mean it should be banned, or that people who oppose a ban are terrorists or criminals.
Yeah, but it’s way harder to kill someone accidentally (or in a fit of rage) with high grade digital encryption than with a firearm.
Totally, except regulating encryption makes much more sense because of al those encryption-violence deaths that happen daily in the US. All those kids with easy access to encryption going to school and encrypting their classmates, the policemen not intervening because they are afraid to get encrypted by the kids armed with military grade AES-512 routines.
It is a modern analog, but with its limits - all this stuff doesn’t happen in countries where encryption is much more regulated and you can’t buy encryption routines in malls.
Your comment comes off as shallow and dismissive. I’d be happy to discuss this further, but not under those conditions.
Guns. Just restrict them, it’s not that hard
The “winner takes all” political system that ends with two extremist parties and a huge divide between people
Healthcare. Do I need to say anything?
The extreme divide between rich and poor
Police force. They hire lowly educated people, preferably racist, receiving barely any training, and what they do get is mostly nonsense. They then get military equipment, and the entire system is protected by a corrupt union
The amount that news organizations are allowed to lie
Sticker price isn’t the price you pay at the till. Why? Why do you do that.
Massive gaps between the walls and doors of public lavatory cubicles. This is not some mystical, advanced technology. Get it together.
I think the toilet wall thing is because we have an expectation that every public building must have public toilets available. Places don’t want you to fuck or shoot up in the bathrooms, so they make them un-private so you hurry the hell up and leave. It’s a bit of hostile architecture, like making park benches that you can’t lie down on to keep people from trying to sleep on them. Make the “undesirables” uncomfortable enough and maybe they’ll go be undesirable somewhere else. Meanwhile it’s just a little bit less nice for everyone else as well.
At-will employment makes no sense to me. You go to work every day knowing you could be fired without any possibility of taking the time to find another job. It would drive me crazy.
The flip side is we can quit at anytime.
Yeah, that really doesn’t make up for it.
I guess that also makes it somewhat easier to get hired though? You can give your employees a chance without thinking too much about it, and if they suck just fire them.
We have this in Germany - for the first six months of employment. Ok, it’s still two weeks notice because that’s the right thing to do, but still, it’s less than the 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 months of notice required after working at a place for 0.5/5/8/10/12/15/20 years. (BGB §622 for the curious)
There is no reason to keep the possibility for such a short notice indefinitely.
Cars. You seem to buy cars like smartphones( actualy probably even worse since buying phone on credit dosent seem to be as common nowadays ) . If you can afford the credit payment for the card dosent mean you can afford the car. In fact why everyone buys stuff on credit cards in the US . It seems insane to me to go to debt for a stupid cofee.
A “politics” channel on a site called Lemmy.World that is specifically only for US politics, because America is the world.
Europeans speak 1.5~2.5 languages each
US Americans seem like 0.8 with phrases like could care less or your a dick.
Tbh 21.6% of Americans being bilingual is way better than I would have guessed. It makes sense that Europeans speak more languages. If each of our states spoke different languages rather than English being a national language, I’d imagine our numbers would be a lot higher.
Everything in this thread so far is normal stuff I could have guessed. Guns, metric, tipping, etc. Most of it has large groups of people in the country that agree, or at least know.
What are some non-obvious things? Culture shock isn’t about major political issues. It’s about universal things that turn out to not be universal.
For example, US people have a strong culture of how standing in line works. It’s basically a moral sin to butt in line unless you have someone holding your place. This is universal in the country. My understanding is that other countries differ. Is that true?
I spent some time in Germany and it’s very much so not true there. I was waiting on line for something and my German friend got in a different line and he got his food a solid ten minutes before me. Afterwards he explained that he took the line against the wall so people could only budge in front of him from one direction. He told me “Germans cut. It’s just the way it is.”
Pickup trucks everywhere. No public transportation usually. General Tso’s chicken is a typical Chinese food you get. Weed products are available almost everywhere legally. Light beer. No proper lager beer even in small breweries. How people drive. No sidewalks most of the time. The whole health industry. Electric sockets. So many churches. The general war against trans people. The general war against women.
No proper lager beer
We import almost every German, Austrian, and Czech beer to the US…what do you think we’re missing?
Augustiner or Hofbräu helles would be a great start at least. Fresh from the tap. Usually what you find is either pils or wheat. Bavarian white lagers are hard to source but those two are the biggest.
Both of those are available at grocery stores where I’m at in Texas. I’m a simple man though, I typically go for Becks or Spaten Premium at the store. Helles lagers are pretty popular microbrews where I’m at, and we also have Celis White, which is pretty exceptional
My take on Becks is that the correct answer to the question “would you like to have a Becks” is “no”.
Yep, you can find them from some grocery stores, but the thing about these beers is how they need to be consumed fresh. From the tap. From a one liter mug. The bottled versions even in Germany are not as good, especially if consumed outside of Bavaria. And then of course there are all these hundreds of small breweries in northern Bavaria that are producing amazing drinks that are impossible to source even in other parts of Germany.
With all the respect for American beer industry, Germany is far ahead of everybody else in here. And a few spots in the northern Bavaria are far ahead of everybody else in Germany. It’s lager, but it’s hard to describe why it’s so good. Fresh, full bodied taste. I miss that.
There is local beer; microbreweries have blossomed a lot with the past 20 years. There just aren’t that many old breweries because less than 10 survived Prohibition.
I know. I’m currently in Asheville, there’s lots of breweries here and some really good beers. I’m just not such a big fan of ales, sours or ipas. I like a really good lager, and I’m living in Germany which has probably the best lagers in the world.
Their US customary units. What even is a fluid ounce, and what is it doing in my drink?
They’re Florida Ounces
Flounces are the best part of US Customary units. It’s all base 2/8/16, which is a hell of a lot more sensible than base 10 units.
It’s all base 2/8/16, which is a hell of a lot more sensible than base 10 units.
Debatable. I probably shouldn’t restart the whole imperial vs metric debate, but I might just say that people who grow up with metric think exactly the opposite.
I’ll convert to metric once we convert to a dozenal number system. Ten is a terrible number to base our counting system on.
Imperial sucks, and metric is better, but still +1 for dozenal. Anybody who isn’t for it is either confused about the very concept of different bases (I’ve talked to plenty of those), or biased.
I don’t know why you dozenal advocates are being downvoted.
Ten is a terrible number to base our counting system on.
Maybe when you are counting apples, but not when you are dealing with arbitrary amounts. Why else is our number system base 10?
Because ten fingers. Base 12 is still better.
