It’s hilarious in Germany. I’ve been at very short crossings (like 5 meters) without a car in sight and everyone just stands there waiting for the sign to change. I just cross - can’t take the New Yorker out of me.
Or maybe it isn't all that hilarious. Maybe it's just you not understanding a convention, a thread in the social fabric, a way (one way) to keep society ordered and sane.
You were observed crossing that street. Conclusions about your person - and perhaps even about the society you represented - were drawn. Positive or negative, but they were drawn.
I hope those conclusions were along the lines of there’s no reason to obey a signal when it’s objectively obvious that it is safe to cross. That adults can use judgement on what is ok to do within a context.
I drew my own conclusions too and had better understanding of how “it was orders I was following” happens.
As someone who has spent the better part of the last decade traveling I can unequivocally say I have almost never come across non Americans who feel this way. It is ALWAYS the Americans who are the the ones loudly talking trash about how terrible Americans are.
As Scott Alexander points out, these Americans counter intuitively are not being self critical when they say this, they are talking trash about the "other" Americans they don't like.
Surely you are joking that it's only the foreigners who are corrupt in Latin America. I've paid enough mandatory standardized bribes to local police to know that's BS.
It's long but worth reading. But under break VII contains the relevant part:
START QUOTE
My hunch – both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe, for whatever reason, identify “America” with the Red Tribe. Ask people for typically “American” things, and you end up with a very Red list of characteristics – guns, religion, barbecues, American football, NASCAR, cowboys, SUVs, unrestrained capitalism.
That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.
Here is a popular piece published on a major media site called :America: A Big, Fat, Stupid Nation". Another: "America: A Bunch Of Spoiled, Whiny Brats". "Americans are ignorant, scientifically illiterate religious fanatics whose “patriotism” is actually just narcissism." "You Will Be Shocked At How Ignorant Americans Are, and we should Blame The Childish, Ignorant American People."
Needless to say, every single one of these articles was written by an American and read almost entirely by Americans. Those Americans very likely enjoyed the articles very much and did not feel the least bit insulted.
And look at the sources. HuffPo, Salon, Slate. Might those have anything in common?
On both sides, “American” can be either a normal demonym, or a code word for a member of the Red Tribe.
END QUOTE
In my experience left leaning (or really blue tribe, read the article for the difference) American travelers do the same thing to try to prove to foreigners that they "aren't the bad type of Americans" (ie, the right/red tribe) that they perceive that foreigners dislike (whereas most foreigners I encounter take for granted that all kinds of people come from all places and don't judge that much by nationality), the irony being that the foreigners don't usually ever say all that much negative about the US and it's the American's who are trying to distance themselves who end up being the ones who vocally dislike America (but really just the people they think are ignorant)
> Ask people for typically “American” things, and you end up with a very Red list of characteristics – guns, religion, barbecues, American football, NASCAR, cowboys, SUVs, unrestrained capitalism.
During the 2016 Trump campaign there was much talk about coal workers and such. Yet there are more yoga instructors than coal industry employees—not just miners but everyone employed by the coal industry.
> According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in February 2017, the industry employed 50,300 people. Note: that isn’t miners. That’s the whole industry. (An earlier estimate by the Census Bureau from 2014 had the number closer to 76,000 — still quite small). There are more yoga instructors in the United States than coal miners — and that gap will continue to increase.
> Now let’s do some comparisons. As Ingraham notes, the entire coal industry “employed about as many as Whole Foods (72,650), and fewer workers than Arby’s (close to 80,000), Dollar General (105,000) or J.C. Penney (114,000). The country’s largest private employer, Walmart (2.2 million employees) provides roughly 28 times as many jobs as coal.” In other words, despite its historical importance, coal is negligible economically.