Ask Lemmy

I honestly feel like Lemmy got considerably less vitriolic toward Americans after the election.

I used to think Lemmy was too insignificant for Russian influents, but I'm not sure anymore.

Have you seen America lately?

find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better

🤦

Are you for real? And you are surprised US and USians get criticised?

Your question contains hints at where you're coming from.

At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better

You look at the criticism and you think they're simply people being jealous or something, that's not it at all. To be fair I'm not sure about what criticism are you seeing constantly, but the ones I've encountered mostly reflect my own criticism of it, e.g. the worst health care in the world, terrible education, abismal class gap, blatant racism, police brutality, overspenditure in military, school shootings, etc, etc, etc. Let me be absolutely clear, the US is NOT stronger than any developed country in any of these, I've lived in places with terrible healthcare that I would not wish on my worst enemy and they're still leaps and bounds better than what you guys have.

But, we don't see them do that with other targets, just the US.

But we do, the difference is no one is making posts claiming Russia is a better country and that's why people criticize it. And most other countries accept their shortcomings, take it from the thread a while back from what people in the US need to hear and the similar one for Europe. Every single one of the answers on the US had someone saying that it was just jealousy, or that it wasn't all that bad, or that that was better than the alternative, or one guy even tried to tell me that his city had none of those issues. On the other hand in the EU one most of the answers were more akin to "you're right, this is something that's really bad here".

reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.

Let me be extremely clear here, Fuck Russia, Fuck China. For all of my criticisms of the USA it is still a (very weird and indirect) democracy. So if I had to choose between those 3 I'll take the USA every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Luckily I don't, and I can live in a country without any of the issues I see there and express my opinion on how poorly the USA treats their citizens (you have to keep paying taxes after moving abroad for crying out loud) in the same manner I would express myself against any other country doing the same.

Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.

Most of the criticism I see re for what the US is doing NOW, not in the past.

Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just

I don't think that's what the majority is doing, there could be a few people like it, but for the major part I think people recognize that the USA is a a "decent" place to live, especially when compared to Russia or China. But what you need to understand is that it's not the greatest country of all like you think, most of us would not move there unless we were offered ludicrous amounts of money.

EU and Russia on the same team lol

No one in Europe believes that, in fact you can still see plenty of Ukrainian flags around.

West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)

If you think MAGA is pseudo-populism I would hate to see what you consider as real populism.

The short answer is that you're probably not used to people telling you the US is not all that great, so you see that as an attack, and you think that because people criticize you that means they are trying to make others hate you, but I think most of us are just pointing your shortcomings because a lot of you act like very entitled narcissists who think there's nothing wrong with the USA so obviously those who speak against it must be puppets.

TL;DR: criticism of the USA doesn't mean there's nothing good there, much less is it an endorsing Russia or China. But you don't need to tell narcissists what they're doing well, they'll tell you themselves.

Most of the anti-American sentiment I've seen on SM over the last 2 or 3 years has been from Americans. It sucks here unless you're rich, racist, and/or incredibly stupid.

You are describing tankies. Not everyone who criticize the US is a tankie. Stay away from lemmygrad, hexbear, lemmy.ml, and you'll see legitimate criticisms of the US.

As someone who would probably qualify as one of these anti-American Americans on Lemmy I can say this: A big factor for me is the despair I feel (having genuinely believed the myths for most of my life) as I see the facade falling away. The genuine awfulness and inhumanity of not just our government, and our economy, but also of the culture, the people themselves, is just overwhelming. These forums are one of the outlets I’ve been using for my rage. I can only speak for myself. I’m not a bot, or a Russian actor, or an edgy teen. I’m a disillusioned middle aged American.

I'm allowed to complain. I live here.

as an american, i whole-heartedly support anti-american sentiment. we fucking deserve all of it. we voted in a clown shitshow of a government and of course the world should laugh

Well, I'm a real European who is not a fan of the US. Not to the point where I'd prefer Russia or other dictatorship shitholes, but it's like having to choose between getting kicked in the balls really hard and getting shot in the head (just for context, I'm not one of the people who enjoy being kicked in the balls).

Every sane person in this situation would choose getting kicked in the balls, but that doesn't mean you're really happy about it.

I'm less worried about the anti-American tendencies than about the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese ones.

American here. When you elect a man—twice—whose character and policies have led to a fractured nation, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and a healthcare system that leaves millions behind, it's no surprise that the world views us with disdain. When your citizens are struggling to afford basic necessities like rent and groceries while a handful of individuals hoard wealth that rivals entire nations, we’ve earned every ounce of criticism.

Buckle up, because the descent into this nightmare is far from over. The worst is yet to come, and it's going to be a long, suffocating fall.

How insanely American to think America being criticized a lot must mean propaganda.

Lemmy.world may have the least of this since they neolib gobblers

Honestly, most of it seems like edgy kids who learned about communism from a YouTube video and are now convinced they have the secret to a better world that nobody else understands. So many of the comments display a substantial lack of understanding about the real world. Many other comments are completely disingenuous, blatantly ignoring or attacking anything that doesn't support their singular argument. They're the viewpoints of inexperienced teenagers, not adult discussions.

There are certainly propaganda posts and communities, but I think the majority of the work is done by actual people who are just echoing what they've read or heard. Filter out a few key communities and a lot of it will disappear.

But, to answer your question more directly, yes, I do feel what you're saying and it gets annoying. Sometimes it gets overwhelming and I consider just deleting my account entirely. I'm so very tired of only seeing the extremes of either side of the pendulum online, rather than having a place for discussion with people of all viewpoints. I'm tired of the polarization.

Lemmy was founded to be where anti-American Americans would go after a lot of their subs were quarantined on Reddit.

That said, it has a major American focus because a lot of users are angry with the American system and don't have a ton of experience with others directly. They've developed an echo chamber here and only got interrupted by the Reddit exodus.

I was listening to NPR a few days ago and they were talking -- in the context of Jimmy Carter's passing -- about the global community having to grapple with two different sides of the United States. The side that is incredibly generous and has contributed an enormous amount to the welfare of people throughout the world and the side that is a basically a bully that uses it's vast power and influence as a means to further it's own selfish interests.

Both of those things can certainly be true. The US has contributed a lot of positive things to the global community and at the same time, the US is effectively the most powerful and sophisticated empire in human history. Empires cannot maintain their power without oppression. Over the last 249 years, we have created some truly horrific disasters, at home and abroad, in the name of acquiring and maintaining power. That deserves criticism no matter who's doing it.

True, we've already seen that right wingers are paid off by Russia to spout about inflation and other brain rot. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnJ6Ttaiu9M ) And a lot of people who are from the US compare their country to EU countries and find glaring holes in their society, like a lack of socialised healthcare, streamlined government services, ect and rant about it like Lemmy is twitter. Keep in mind that because Lemmy is majority English speaking the vast majority of post will be about the US, because its the defacto empire of the 21st century. For me I go out of my way to include communities from my own culture so I'm not out of the loop. The kinds of people who post politics to !Menes are the same people who take the definition of "meme" literally, and suck to talk to at every party they attend.

I'm American. I'll jump on the criticize America bandwagon any day!

So, no, we suck in the worst possible ways. That is really all there is to it

You mean lemmy, the platform created and maintained by staunch marxist-leninists? That lemmy strikes you as anticapitalist and antiAmerican?

Weird.

I'm American and the main reason I don't aim the same criticism towards other countries is that I'm American and don't know enough about them. Maybe some people are agitating for malign purposes, but how much does that matter to a responsible netizen? No one knows who anyone is - maybe idiot takes are made by idiots or bad actors, it doesn't change much. Lastly, one quote stuck with me after the last election season : " the reactionary is always right about what is wrong but almost always wrong about what would be right"