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It's not shame so much as deep embarrassment for the current state of our country. We look like fucking morons on the world stage. Thankfully we will move on from this stage in our history, but the stain may remain for decades to come.
We look like fucking morons on the world stage.
The only sort of solace to this, is that many other countries are clearly following the same path, so its not something inherent to just the US. Idiots are everywhere, and they vote.
Everyone is pointing to the US, but the same initial precursors are happening under their own nose.
Canada has voted against the populist right for the last decade. And each time the Conservative party chooses some one more right wing. And each time they get a bit closer to winning.
Trump galvanized people last time, scared them away from the right. This time he seems to be inspiring the right wing politicians, and people live it.
I don't know if we can hold out much longer.
i hate when people shit on the US but don't acknowledge any sort of solutions to put in their own country to avoid this situation
While agreeing for the most part, it's painfully clear as someone in the EU how politics in the US empower far right rethorics everywhere else. While politicians in my country have condemned the actions of the US, the political landscape has shifted dramatically.
Everyone is pointing at the US because their politics trickles down into ours, not the other way around.
You don't have to be at fault to be ashamed.
I feel deeply embarrassed about being from the US. It's like hanging out with a group of friends out of necessity, later realizing they were all assholes, and trying to come to terms with the fact you spent so many years with them. I live outside the US now and I'm even more embarrassed to be from there. Every time there's some culture shock my takeaway is either "wow how did I normalize this broken aspect of the US" or "I wish I was from somewhere that didn't do those things to that person's country".
I also feel embarrassed and guilty over getting out of the US. I worked in tech and now I'm living off tech savings to start a life outside the US. I left my friends behind many of them are struggling financially, I left my community behind many of which are actively homeless, I chose to leave. Sure I'm leaving in part because my trans ass is on the chopping block but I see a lot of trans people fight harder instead of flee. I fought for so many years though and I couldn't keep doing it so I left. The US did this to my community, made me confront choices I never wanted to make, I'm disgusted by having paid taxes to the war machine, and I justify working in tech as a way out of there but really I feel guilty over choosing to buy into that side of the US too so I could secure personal safety.
guilty over getting out of the US
Please don't feel guilty for leaving somewhere you don't like. That is your right. Stay safe, friend.
Living in the USA myself, I feel shame at how I normalized and rationalized the horrible aspects of this country. I'd already been a minimalist and was anti-consumerism from before I was an adult; but I had downplayed the severity of our systemic violence until it hit me personally. Above all I wish I was doing more to fight this system, like the people you described.
For as long as I am alive I will stay in the USA. I'm not going to give up on holding out here, as miserable as I've felt this last year. I'd like to believe something I do may someday inspire others who are braver and have more resources to do something more concrete.
China has been China-ing for a while, we get it. America's actions are relatively fresh, and a majority of us DID choose him. While I'll immediately reassure people that I didn't vote for him, the fact that I have to separate myself from what's going on comes from a sense of shame over that.
That said, if I met a Russian I wouldn't necessarily hold the invasion of Ukraine against them... But I might have to ask if they really support that shit.
America's actions are relatively fresh,
At the risk of being annoying as shit, that is not true. The only fresh part is that Europeans and/or white people are feeling a small part of the heat too.
was just going to say this. anyone who thinks this is new didn't pay attention in history class, or that history class conveniently glossed over or romanticized our many, many atrocities.
American education has always been a complete shitshow. Recently I realized that I never actually knew anything about the war of 1812 because the extent of what was taught to us in fucking NY was like a single page in a textbook. Unless you took AP you didn't learn shit.
I've learned more about it now, I'm just pissed that my education didn't actually cover jack shit.
It's by design
I don't think public education is meant to make people informed, one of it's goals is mass indoctrination. It's the same in almost every country. I'm fortunate to be one of the people that recognize that. Me being in two spheres of influence make it so easy to identify what propaganda looks like, I seen it on both sides, two different countries, how media, like tv shows, portrays things.
They want obedient people to keep the cogs of the machine running. They want nationalism and absolute obedience to the state, the government.
In the US, at least, there are a lot of reliable sources on internet, and also public libraries... but of course, poor people don't have time to educate themselves, just as its designed. The lower class, different countries, similar story.
China has been eliminating poverty for quite some time. In fact, over the last 70 years, China accounts for 80% or more of the entire global poverty alleviation gains. The US has created more poverty in that same time.
But also, the US has been racist, violent, colonialist, jingoistic, misogynistic, and white supremacist since it's founding. You know those propaganda images DHS posts on Twitter? Those are from the US's time of westward expansion. This isn't new. What's new is that we have given up on trying to hide it, which is something we did for for the last 70 years. But even in the 40s we had concretation camps, we had open racism in all of politics, we had the second largest Nazi group in the world.
And after WW2? Operation Paperclip? Operation Gladio? The US openly staffed NATO with Nazi officers. The US openly advocated for Nazi politicians to lead West Germany. There were literal Nazis running West German after the war.
And then of course the Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Irag wars. The Afghanistan war. The embargo against Cuba. The coup in Iran.
This is what the US is. Nixon banned heroin explicitly to imprison black people. We have slave labor producing billions of dollars in value annually. And we punish our prison slaves who don't work by giving them solitary. All of that is massive gross human rights violations, things we've pretended to invade other countries for.
This is who we are. It's not new.
Considering voter turnout is ridiculously low in America the majority of us did not choose Trump. Just less than half of those that voted did which is 32% of the population. Also, Trump was not exactly the start of American decline, it is more like he is a symptom of it. A reaction to it if you would. American has been a violent an oppressive nation that we should be ashamed of for roughly 250 years. Trump is just very good at making that obvious.
Not voting is a vote for the winner by default. I highly doubt that every single person that didn’t vote did so due to being unable to.
a majority of us DID choose him
77m voted for Trump which is 32% of the voting age population.
As a percentage of the overall population it is ~23%.
I grew up in Indonesia, my sister is from Java, my brother is from Singapore. I'm natively from California, and I'm a huge white boy. I am ashamed that the country of the free, the country of the brave who had bounteous arms to welcome the downtrodden and abused of the world is no longer that place. Instead it's the land of the secret police, tbe land of a pedophile traitor president who can't stand any kind of criticism because he's a fucking coward who dodged military service.
We were raised with "pride," not necessarily racially or ethnocentric, but a broader sense that transcended such boundaries. I grew up in the 80s-90s in the midwest, and we were taught America was a "melting pot" of cultures, ideas, and races, and that we should look forward to a time when whites are not the majority because the lines will fall away, the average color will be brown as we all mix over the next generations, giving us less reason to fight. And we should look forward to it, because that's been our story so far - broken, impoverished immigrants came here looking for opportunity, and found it through hard work and smart thinking, and then became a part of our shared tapestry. We were taught to be proud of this, that we were stewards of this tradition in the best, most advanced country in the world.
And now, well. The basest instincts of people have been brought to the surface and America now stands as an openly white nationalist, isolationist, fascist-tinged autocracy where the ideals I grew up with seem long antiquated.
So yeah hard not to feel ashamed of what's happened to our shared identity in just a few decades.
I feel that way but because I’m human.
We are not good people.
I believe the shame stems from the moral injury we all suffer when we peacefully stand by in a democracy and let bad people control the government and inflict serious harm on innocents
So in some respect it is in fact all of our faults because we do in fact sit by and watch people die so we can respect the democratic process.
I'm just embarrassed as fuck
To the point of being furious...
Because it collectively is our fault.
Anyone who has been embarrassed by a family member knows.
I don't have pride in my government or its actions.
It was actively causing a lot of harm for most of its existence and is now turbo charging its ability to enshittify the world.
The LEAST I can do is make it clear we're not all in support of this shit.
Love the country and people though. Lots of cool forests to roam and lots of people who don't suck.
There's a huge difference between being ashamed of your Government's actions and behavior and being ashamed of who you are/where you were born.
One is a valid criticism of the ruling class ignoring the people's desire for peace and social responsibility. The other is a mental health issue much like some people who are ashamed of the race or gender they were born as.
I get attacked by people unable to separate this conflation because I encourage people resistant to our government to pick up the goddamn American flag and wave it. To have some measure of pride in the institution we live in so others take it seriously when we demand improvement.
Well this last election really broke me from thinking of myself as an American. I just happen to live here.
Because the truth is our democracy is managed by oligarch propaganda. And our votes mean very little outside of local elections.
A vote for Trump and a vote for Harris were both going to continue the harms of the MIC and the fossil fuel industry. Yes, Trump is an accelerant. And I voted not to add gasoline.
But the fire was going to burn one way or the other.
Anyway, I think folks that feel ashamed still believe that their voice matters. Which is by design of the political and business class.
One word:
Tribalism.
It’s shaming to see people and institutions you were proud of and bragged about being the best, then devolve into something the rest of the world laughs at.
I don't know about others but I imagine for a lot its just guilt by association. I've definitely been feeling it for a while.
I also think a lot of people feel bad about their tax money going into the pockets of so many evil people for so many evil purposes. One of the reasons I personally stopped paying taxes. I wish my fellow Americans would join me on that end, but it isnt easy.
Speaking only for myself: because the American government has, for 250 years, claimed to act on behalf of the American people. When it was liberating concentration camps and sending people to the moon, that was something to be proud of.* When it was upholding slavery and winking at Jim Crow laws, it wasn't.
It's a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," and so he purports to speak and act on my behalf. That's deeply embarrassing and shameful, even if I couldn't have done anything differently to prevent it.
* (Yes, I know that even those "good" examples are complicated. I'm just forming an example here)
I'm from the US but left to live outside it. I will NEVER FUCKING EVER call myself an American, much less a proud American. I'll call myself a NYer because I owe most of who I am to that state/city, but I am ashamed about the country I grew up in and absolutely do not want to be associated with it. The US government has only ever caused me and my people harm.
Did they fulfill their civic duty? Did they meaningfully fight to defend their cause?
If they fell short of their own expectations, they'll feel shame.
in my own case, it's that I've (not intentionally but still) benefited from a system that subjugated others (natives, people of all colors, and women) to secure the national infrastructure I've directly profited from. Everything from education, clean water and housing, to medical care often shockingly focused on what ails and heals white males. And the sickening knowledge that the same ones who want to deport taxpaying workers who rarely benefit from the enormous amounts of money our country throws around are the same as me, living on land stolen from the people who lived here, who we basically exterminated. Finally, we use the trappings of a pseudo-democracy to declare all men are equal, but really, they mean wealthy heteronormative white men, because otherwise you're the other and disenfranchisement should be expected.
That's-just-the-way-it-is? only if you accept it.
Because I look at my country and what it's done and feel insufficient for my failure to keep it from doing stupid and evil things.
Also the European and Canadian frustration with America and Americans is understandable, but it has an impact especially when you still think highly of those places and their people.
My family settled here in 1630. I don't feel shame about being american, I feel dread at the resurrgence of barbaric population control as opposed to compassionate capitalism and universal basic income for all. My entire childhood and participation in civics was a temporary era not the foundation of a beautiful future.
I look at my children and want to apologize to them for what they'll endure after my demise. What a way to wake up...
I've been watching the sopranos lately and the answer is because I'm secretly in the mafia and the Italians invented everything
Emotions aren't entirely rational with a clearly thought out process to justify why one should feel them. In any case, its common enough for people to assign the general actions of people within a group to the group as a whole (which isnt really fair or a reflection of reality, but can be pragmatic at times and requires less thought and information than judging on an individual basis, so it makes sense that people's brains are wired up to do it even if its not always desirable). This can get extended to the groups one is a part of oneself, to include those whose membership one did not choose. And the US at the moment has even worse than typical leadership, has a great deal of power for that leadership to abuse, still has free enough media for people within it to stand a good chance of knowing about at least some of it, and if youre here on lemmy youre probably running into people with a somewhat higher than normal awareness of a lot of the historical abuses previous Americans have perpetrated just because it leans left and anti-establishment and those things get talked about a lot in such spaces.
When the rest of the world hates you for shit a minority of your country did, but succumb to generalized thinking and blame all Americans (looking at you, Europe), a guilt complex can be internalized.
It’s a sort of in-group cringe.