This is the type of video that relays certain realities which I feel Americans need to understand and get more exposure to.
Too often, we Americans are told that we are the greatest nation in the world, that we are number one, that this is God's country. This message is reinforced in so many ways, and with varying degrees of subtlety. After all, our kids recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag from a very early age. Personally, I learned it in kindergarten, well before there was any chance that anyone in my classroom could possibly begin to understand the lofty ideals which those words are supposed to represent. My suspicion is that I am hardly the only one who feels this way. Also, we are told in numerous ways that we stand out as truly wonderful and an example for the rest of the world to follow. Every president, regardless of party affiliation, ends their speeches with "God bless America." We have been referred to as the "Arsenal of Democracy" and the "shining city on the hill." Recent presidents suggested that we serve as a both a champion and a model of democracy for the rest of the world, even though our own democracy now looks decidedly fragile. And we have a group of elites who assure us that "American exceptionalism" means that we are basically exempt from the limitations that govern over the rest of the world, and which prevents them from reaching the dizzying heights which we have reached.
It is my personal view that we have been so dominated by these constant messages about our own greatness and exceptionalism, and how we enjoy more freedom and prosperity than the rest of the world, that we lose sight of the possibility that this is little more than propaganda. In fact, many other countries enjoy freedoms, in some cases more freedom than we may enjoy here. But we Americans are collectively not able to see this, probably for a number of reasons. One would be the nation's relative distance from other powerful and influential nations in the world. Another would be that many Americans really are not interested in hearing about or traveling to other nations, one way or the other. Still another reason - not entirely unrelated to these previous reasons - is again, we have been bombarded with reminders of our own presumed superiority for so long, that the collective mentality is that we must be the best at everything, without exception. Why bother wondering if, for example, other industrialized nations seem to have figured out something in terms of healthcare, or guaranteed vacation time, or far better public transportation system, if we have something better right here? After all, they should be following our example, and not the other way around, right?
So we Americans should listen more often to people like these, who made this video. They seem like a typical American couple in many ways, who just happened to wind up moving to Europe. Once there, they began to see things quite a bit differently, that maybe there are advantages that people in other countries have which, in fact, we are missing here in the United States. That maybe, just maybe, we can actually learn something by their example, if we are willing to get past our own conceits and prejudices. If, in other words, we are able to get over ourselves and our fixation with our own presumed superiority to perhaps see if the peoples of other countries have something which we might learn and even benefit from.
Please take a look at the video below:
3 American myths we don't believe anymore after living in Europe
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