It happened when I was kid growing up in another country, as a US citizen, and then coming to the US to see for myself why I had heard so much trash talk about Americans.

We are arrogant, spoiled, dumb and racist. The world expects us to be better. We are privileged like a spoiled rich brat and are waisting our fortune. We have what other countries do not and yet still ignore our own poor. We openly shit on our own minorities and immigrants that want to come here and build with us.

Even dirt poor countries have free healthcare and education. Our education system has been ignored and allowed to fall farther and farther behind the entire world.I came here in when I was in the 6th grade and immediately was shocked that kids my age could barely read. This is richest country on the entire planet, ever! Multiple choice? You mean they give you the answer and just mix it in with wrong answers!?

Our celebrated values that we put forward in our popular media (how the world learns about us by the way) do not include humility or compassion, it’s all direct or veiled celebrations of military might. Every hero is fighting. Guns guns guns, fight fight fight. Our military power allows us to do nearly whatever we want and we do.

Every disparaging comment I heard or that was aimed at me for being American I learned to be true. They are tired of our bullshit. The world doesn’t hate us, they are deeply disappointed in us. Several generations of disappointment.

Perspective from a mid-twenties American. I realized it was horseshit during the 2016 Trump election.

I was turning 18 just in time to vote in this election, and it was right around then that I started forming my own ideas about politics and what political “side” I stood on. Like a majority people with a semi-functioning brain, I thought Trump was an actual joke, a meme that had no chance at actually winning, like how we were acting when Kanye ran. Unironically, I thought that having trainwrecks of a leader was something that “other countries” did, obviously America wouldn’t let someone like this win because even though we make little mistakes here and there like Iraq and slavery we’re still the good guys and we wouldn’t actually let a moron like Trump become our president.

When it became obvious that he was more than a joke and an actual serious candidate with high potential to win, I realized that the only people consistently talking about how amazing America was at everything were the people voting for him, and I started dissecting the things I’d taken for granted.

For me it was when I was around 8 or 9 and met someone from Kenya. They could speak perfect English, wore normal clothes, and talked about having electricity. I’d literally never been told that those things existed in Africa - every reference to that continent only talked about tribes and jungles, save for Egypt which only talked about ruins and deserts. I asked around and found that most of the rest of the world has the same stuff we have, and most countries have a functioning government. I was so confused - why were we the country of freedom when everyone else has the same thing?

At the time I just assumed that there was something I was missing, or maybe the rest of the world just caught up to our idea, but eventually I came to the conclusion that they tell us we’re the country of freedom - and keep our studies of other countries to a minimum when we’re young - so that we can internalize the rhetoric that our country is the best before we find out that most other countries about the same, and often better in certain ways.

America is #1 in production of aircraft carriers. America is #1 in the number of incarcerated citizens per capita. America is #1 in the number of adults who think angels are real. America is #1 in defense spending.

I grew up poor and black. The illusion was never there.

When I graduated from college. I was fed the, “work hard, go to college, live well” spiel. I worked hard, I went to college, graduated with honors.

All I have to show for it is debt.

I work a job that’s… Fine, but I also cry most days because of the misery of it. I haven’t gone to a doctor in years because I can’t afford it. I can barely save (I have, like, $100 in “savings”). I will likely never be a home owner, and I will most likely have to work until I die, which breaks my spirit the more I think about it.

On less personal note, when I got to sit at the “grown up” table in regards to politics, I quickly realized that (most) people in government either don’t give a shit or actively work against the peoples interest. I hear of other countries with their free Healthcare and education, workers rights, pensions, and I weep with envy. America is like a third world country in a first world mask.

My answer to this is so complex I’m not sure I can put it into words. Grew up at the very height of cold war US #1 propaganda in a military community. I’m a veteran. So many moments where those sentiments rang a little hollow, even if they were enticing, but I really wasn’t aware enough to put it all together at any one moment.

I’m in my 50s now, and over time enough of those myths of US exceptionalism were weakened as I learned more about US imperialism, and became more aware of how easy it is to find yourself choosing between food and medicine (or even getting neither) in the US, and could see how so much of our culture revolves around hiding our nation’s flaws from ourselves like avoiding seeing your own fat naked ass (or similar insecurity you have) in the mirror. Edit: I can’t not drop a line here about realizing that our mistreatment of African Americans didn’t end with the civil rights act. I grew up privileged and sheltered enough that I believed it had for a very long time. And our police problems are only the most high profile example of how this continues. I don’t think it’s the most pervasive nor the most systemically damaging example though.

I think we have the potential to live up to every single bit of propaganda. I think we’ve done a poor job executing on it. Individual people I meet every single day amaze me with how wonderful and generous they are. But huge groups of our people are pretty awful, and a much bigger group is still avoiding looking at their fat ass in the mirror when they come out of the shower. I’m not sure whether things will head up or down from here.

I’ll close with this, which covers most of my bases I think: https://youtu.be/OO18F4aKGzQ

Its kinda hard to ignore the healthcare problem. That always stank of corruption.

When they had us stand up in grade school and pledge allegiance to the flag. Nope, no thanks. If we’re that amazing we wouldn’t compel children to worship nationalist symbols, we’d give them reasons to be proud of their country rather than trying to compel worship.

On the other hand we’re #1 at a lot of things, like medical bankruptcies, mass shootings and incarceration per capita. So, go us and our amazing country?

I’m not an American but seeing that bit from The Newsroom was kind of a hammer on the nail. America is not the greatest country in the world

Learning actual US history, for starters.

When the police told me to kill myself

I’m not American, but I grew up there. I knew the US was a little off when I realized it was over-the-top religious which spilled over into politics. I had this idea that whatever country was the most progressive and secular would naturally gravitate towards good policies. I think my gut feeling was right. The best countries are indeed irreligious and don’t have entire communities that lose their minds over pop music that when played backward sounds like Satan speaking. That’s about when I discovered the liberal vs conservative dipole and how the Republicans try to dismantle everything good going for the country. Combo that with the low wages, the racism, the glass ceilings, over-policing, lack of public funding, lack of open public spaces*, and the injustice that I saw. I quickly realized the American dream was a mirage enjoyed by a select few and I left.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the US as my second home and wish it the best. But to call it #1 is crazy talk.

• Maybe it was the cities I was living in but I could not go out and spend $0 and sit at a plaza without being accused of loitering. I find that ridiculous for a first-world country.

6th grade I really started paying attention to the pledge of allegiance in really what something like that meant. I question why I was pledging my allegiance to a flag every morning. It wasn’t my choice I was told to do this. And that didn’t feel right to me until I stopped.

In high school. Noticed the various branches of the military would never leave and were always trying to recruit. I noticed in the kids around me behavioral differences, as they were hyped up to join the military. But my great-grandfather who is in the military and was on Normandy Beach… He wasn’t hype about the military. My uncle who is in the Navy barely speaks of it. And my other uncle who was in the Vietnam war… Seemed rather traumatized by the whole experience. And George W Bush and everything surrounding 9/11, the definite WMDs that totally existed.

Also in high school I got to meet foreign exchange students. Made friends with a bunch of them and got to learn about how things are in various parts of the world that really didn’t add up to the things that I was being told.

Then in college and post college, thanks though like early YouTube and even early Reddit, I got to learn a lot more about the world than anything grade school had ever taught me.

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