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(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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I'm an American who has lived in Spain for the past 11 years. I've grown up in the States, worked in the States as a young person, still visit frequently, but my professional, personal, and cultural life has not been primarily there for some time.
I am telling you, both cultures have their dumb preoccupations, their misconceptions, and their morons.
The idea of "America is so bad, Americans are so dumb" is exactly the same ideology as American exceptionalism. It is just as wrong.
That's not what I try to say, America is simply first rn and similar groups all over the western world adopt it because of that, it's not a secret that the western world started to move to the right again in recent times and that leads to a lot of shit if you ask me which definitely isn't limited to America but currently they are simply the first to do certain really bad tgings!
As I said, America is a cultural hegemony at the moment. It does export a lot of its culture, but far from all of it's culture.
I think the direction the world is moving is a bit of a mixed bag. With LGBT stuff, it is moving far to the left very quickly. With things like workers rights it has stagnated or moved rightwards somewhat. It's true that the Western world has seen the emergence of the alt-right in the past decade. But there is an alt-left or far left that has also been gaining in prominence. Generally just deviation from the political center in both directions.
Judiging from the culture war the alt-right started to adopt in europe and other global leader changes (E.g. India) in the past few years I highly disagree, there is more accaptance in the general population but over all there are more and more countries LGBTQ people aren't welcome in or have to flee from and the pure hate appears even here in Austria and in our neighbor countries. Trump of all people put it very well, five years ago his audiance didn't even know what trans is and now they get more excited about it than about tax cuts. I do agree that the world generally moves towards neo liberal ideas rouggly since the early 2000s and that workers right are at risk too, that's just not a very new development, stuff like that simply gains visibility during a crisis.
Yeah, no. The Middle East, for example, is heading leftwards by leaps and bounds. It just seems slow from the standpoint of a single human lifetime. Remember, they were, with a few exceptions, warring desert bands on horses only a bit over 100 years ago. Not saying there aren't exceptions (Iran, which, is sort of Middle-East-adjacent, would be an example).
The same trend is true all over the world. The thing is people get too emotional that they lose sight of secular trends for the ups and down of individual months and years. Just compare the culture now to 30 or 40 years ago. It very well might be a good strategy in getting what they want, it might even be necessary to keep cultural momentum going in the direction they want it to go, so, in that sense, it might be necessary. Seeing the truth is not necessarily a "good" or even advantageous thing.
But this attitude doesn't reflect reality.