Mastodawn

Europeans don't, maybe sometimes can't, understand the absolute crushing pressure and gaslighting that most Americans are put through to make us the way we are.

It's a decades long effort to turn most of the population into a money and power pump for a tiny elite class, all while grinding us into dust.

We're crazy and scared all the time, and have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world.

There's a reason dying of opiates seemed like a rational choice to a lot of people.

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Quinn Norton Mar 14

The rest of world never sees the poor and desperate America, they mostly stay in the decently rich bits of New York or California, and have no idea what a "food desert" is.

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ClaraBlackInk Mar 14

@quinn Americans also often don't travel within our own country.

One of my current neighbors thinks she would need pepper spray to travel abroad and she's disinterested in traveling more than a state or two away from home. She's so extremely angry but the other neighbors are so sweet to her. The fear has her trapped in this small corner of life and the smallness of her life has her angry, resentful, and clingy.

Folks have ideas about the other states informed by tv and news.

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Bill Woodcock

@clarablackink @quinn

As an American living in France, I'm constantly being asked by Americans if I'm safe. Like, because of the constant rioting that they believe must be worse here than in the US. I have, a few times, tried to figure out specifically where the supposed riots are, and gotten on my bicycle to go check them out. I haven't actually found one yet. Each time that I've had time to try to track the story back, it turns into Russian disinfo ops and Fox News trying to perpetuate American fear.