This is NOT America
The distortion of worldviews towards the loudest members
The United States of America (or “America” for short) has defined the direction of humanity in recent history. They had pioneered the way forward for many of our current practices in our day to day lives through their large footprint in business, economy and culture (boundaries between which are sometimes blurry) such as the 9–5 job which is a relic of the Ford era or fast food . But the most important of all is their heavy influence on media that sometimes blurs the boundaries between what is American and what isn’t. As the Canadian philosopher and one of the fathers of media theory, Marshall McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message”.
The American influence manifests itself in strange ways. For example, protests in the UK against new stories that broke out in America exemplify this. There was an Occupy Wall Street movement in London, three years after the crash when a story broke out in America. Another such experience was with the “Black Lives Matter” protests. A movement against blatant racism in American society sparked a movement here in the UK — a very different situation. Conversations with protestors in the media laid bare the fact that their anger was based on events that conspired in the US. There have been police shootings in the UK but the demographics are very different to that of the US. The media generalises American problems as worldwide problems and people are energised, indoctrinated and mobilised by this. A symptom of this is when youth from minorities in Europe are radicalised based on America’s actions.
The media does a very bad job distinguishing social trends in America and the rest of the world. The British society is starkly different to American society, even more so for some European countries. Issues like distrust in government, systematic racism, consumerism, big pharma and overprescription, government lobbying, corporation abuse, privacy and government snooping — all issues that are the most pertinent to America and not so much to a lot of other countries. Privacy and snooping was seen as a key issue in America whereas people in Sweden and the UK did not necessarily see it as the biggest of issues. This stems from the lack of inherent distrust in the US government. The issues mentioned do exist in Europe to a lesser extent but there are many protections in place and the societies are immensely different. America today is no longer representative of “the west” or western society as a whole — as fault lines appear
The flipside to the media’s lack of grasp on nuance is that Americans become self centred and project their worldview on the rest of the world bolstered by their media available worldwide. The United States has usurped the right to refer to themselves as “America” and “American”. Having travelled to Central or south America and spoken to the locals, biases become evident. If you said “I travelled across America”, a completely logical response would be “Which countries in America?”
The loudest one defines the world. And its issues and definitions seem to be contagious — atleast in the media. If you are in America and you choose to exclaim something along the lines of “what has this world come to?” — think again.
