[coldtea]

>I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more.

Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country.

It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant people (which exist everywhere in the world, but have particularly large concentrations there).

Or on your tolerance of a messed up party system, a messed up legal system, a messed up prison system (and the biggest incarceration rates in the world), cops that have an open license to shoot people, and the worse and more widespread racism this side of South Africa. Or on your tolerance on very bad statistics on violence (especially gun violence).

Or on your tolerance for businesses having near feudal reign on their workers.

That said, if you have the money, and the connections, the US is a pretty good deal to spend them. Not to mention very nice landscapes, and generally good hearted and optimistic people (besides the aforementioned negatives).

Plus, for some industries (basically IT and movies), they're tops.

[notlob]

> It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant people (which exist everywhere in the world, but have particularly large concentrations there).

FYI, using "redneck" as a pejorative, as in this context, can be interpreted as pretty offensive, and maybe this is unintentional. I for one consider it offensive.

[eeeuo]

The term derives from someone who works in the sun. It's unambiguously elitist. I don't think you need to hedge here, it's quite clear.

I also enjoy the pejorative aimed at a sectarian group immediately followed by decrying "ignorant people".

[grasshopperpurp]

>According to Chapman and Kipfer in their "Dictionary of American Slang", By 1975 the term had expanded in meaning beyond the poor Southerner to refer to "a bigoted and conventional person, a loutish ultra-conservative."[20]

If the OP was using it in this way, I don't see the issue. If he/she was using it to just describe laboring, rural whites, I agree; it's offensive and inappropriate. Given the context of the statement, I assumed the former.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck

On the topic, Randy Newman's song "Rednecks" is a scathing critique of Northerners and their "hidden" racism and hypocrisy on the subject.

>Yes he's free to be put in a cage In Harlem in New York City And he's free to be put in a cage On the South Side of Chicago And the West Side And he's free to be put in a cage In Hough in Cleveland And he's free to be put in a cage In East St. Louis And he's free to be put in a cage In Fillmore in San Francisco And he's free to be put in a cage In Roxbury in Boston They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around . . . (apologies for the formatting)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTLHxpUQ_B8 (NWS)

[eeeuo]

When Jeff Foxworthy does his (incredibly unfunny) "You might be a redneck, if..." bits, the crowd is not laughing and nodding and saying "That's so true, I too am a bigoted and loutish ultra-conservative!"

To many people, redneck simply describes a particular rural lifestyle. If the OP wanted to call out bigotry, they should have called out bigots.

(This, admittedly, might have been a difficult sell given that it was immediately followed up an attack on a religious group)

[RestlessMind]

As an Asian, I have been to 10+ cities each in the US and Western Europe, and have spent considerable amount of time on both continents. While being a data point of one, here are my observations:

- Residents of European cities were less welcoming to foreigners like me. (Maybe due to language issues? I speak accented German, a bit of Spanish and English, which can explain why Parisians were rude).

- Immigration to USA, along with path to its citizenship, was a hard but straightforward process (6-7 years once you get H1B). In Europe, I found that UK and Switzerland has a simpler process, but other countries (eg. France) make it very hard to be their citizen.

- Stereotypes abound on both sides of Atlantic (eg. "socialist countries stuck with horrible economies", "rednecks, puritans, prudes, ignorant" as your comment says), which seem highly exaggerated.

- both US and Western Europe offered a far better quality of life compared to my home country. And such debates (USA vs Western Europe) seem farcical from that perspective, or "first world problems" as they say.

[cjf4]

>Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country.

All of which enjoy the shadow of nuclear security provided by the United States.

[KirinDave]

That was true briefly for a few years. The EU is itself a fairly well-armed nuclear power.

psst They're also quietly better at cybersecurity than the US government.

[bepotts]

This isn't true at all. The EU is just now starting to think about self defense because of Trump. Trump's insurgence is putting into question the US-led world order and NATO alliances. Without the US, NATO is functionally useless.

The EU is under the security blanket of the US, whether it likes to believe it or not. Hell, most of those countries pay less than 2 percent of their budgets towards their own defense, and they get pissy when the past three US Presidents call them out on it.

[KirinDave]

It is true that the EU has worked with NATO. However, it's not clear that America needs all the military force it has since a lot of it is quite cleary force projecting on economic adversaries.

Suggesting the EU "needed" this is a bit misleading. And I say this as an American exasperated at our refusal to reduce force projection on foreign nations.

[bepotts]

The EU definitely "needed" it. Aside from France and the UK, EU countries are pathetic militarily.

NATO was originally formed to be a defense alliance of democratic countries against communism and Russia. Russia, while a threat to the United States, poses more of a threat to Europe (for geographic reasons) than to the United States.

[soperj]

The US of late has caused more shit than anything. The Syrian war is a direct consequence of going into Iraq for no reason.

[Semirhage]

Let’s go back a bit. The US intervened in Afghanistan against the Soviets decades ago, training what would become Al Qaeda, which would later attack the US. In response the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq (again) destabilizing the region and leading to the birth of ISIS, the “Arab Spring” and the Syrian civil war.

It’s just waves of blowback from bad decisions without any concept that the groundwork for more blowback is being laid.

[Semirhage]

You do know that France is a nuclear power, right?

[Cuuugi]

You sound like someone who experiences America through news stories.

>Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country. Some people prefer not to sign over 3/4 of their pay to the government.

[jbob2000]

Yet, those same people are OK with handing 5/4s of their pay to billionaires.

The debt levels Americans sustain purely to avoid the “taxman” is astounding!