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by summer_steven 3226 days ago
Your making the classic mistake of equating the top 10% European countries like Switzerland and Sweden with the entire United States. Midwestern states, Washington state, and New England have cohesion.

Correct your perspective and see that the United States and Europe are fairly equal. Example: Italy has next to no cohesion.

2 comments

> Italy has next to no cohesion

References? In my personal experience that's far for accurate. If anything they are an extremely nationalistic country.

Living half way between the US and the EU has taught me otherwise - that the kind of cohesion between say Portugal and Sweden is surprisingly solid - once you know where to look e.g. social values, political views. Trying to do the same with someone from deep Texas and a little town in the Maine coast could be an interesting example of the opposite.

Having different languages even inside the same territory doesn't account for lack of cohesion. It's quite irrelevant in practice actually.

Cohesion seems to be mistaken these days by sheepishly following politicians into unnecessary wars and lacking critical thinking. Widespread ignorance is not cohesion, is divisive at best.

> References? In my personal experience that's far for accurate. If anything they are an extremely nationalistic country.

Turkey is a nation that is even more nationalistic and they have very serious trust issues with their fellow citizens.

It's not a value judgment. It is a fact. Plenty of polls, references and other evidence exists. Or ask any Turk.
Uh, visit inner-city Milwaukee, Detroit, or Gary sometime. Or, for that matter, some opioid-ravaged population-3000 former logging town in central Wisconsin. Social cohesion seems to evaporate along with jobs in the Midwest as everywhere else.
> some opioid-ravaged population-3000 former logging town in central Wisconsin

You're buying a false narrative. Most midwestern town in states like Montana, the Dakotas, Utah do not have opioid problems. In fact, those states have the happiest and most satisfied people in this country.

Actually that is the false narrative. Those states may have the most satisfied people, but they also have the highest overdose death rates: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/11/oregons_h...

(Google "National drug overdose rates" for more info - CDC and academia have plenty of studies, but no pretty graphs)