When would Americans stop being silly people?

I’m sorry, can you summarize the assertion? I can’t watch 1 second of Bill Maher. Besides being a horrible person and objectively not funny, he’s the owner of one of the most punchable faces on the planet.

@hello321 I agree with you 100% about Bill Maher. Not funny, he’s just lame. It’s asinine to say American are silly and certainly not funny.

Colonials are people collectively stuck in their rebellious teenager phase. Whereas Chinese people are obedient worker drones. You should meet somewhere in the middle.

He’s not correct. There are intelligent, serious people in both countries, as well as what I would call silly people in both countries.

I know nothing about Bill Maher, have never listened to him.

He’s not all wrong, we aren’t as focused and allow ourselves the luxury of dissent too often.

^^Hear hear

Kevin McCarthy. Silly person.
https://youtu.be/5UirhqmmXlI

I’m not Chinese but my culture is close enough to that of Chinese. So I guess I can comment here.

This video reminds me of a period of time in my country before COVID, especially between 2010 and 2017. It was a time when every time I browsed the Internet, there had to be a least one person who was sick and tired of my country’s corruption, incompetence and stupidity. They complained about how bad the country was and how no one was smart enough to care. They complained about almost everything, from the government to the culture. And while they were complaining, they compared the country to that of other countries. And the country that was most frequently brought up was, you guess it, America. They said America was the standard of everything our country should be doing, from their honest government to their superior culture. It got to a point where even people in real life did the comparison too. There was even at least one Youtuber who became famous just for comparing my country to America.

And to be honest, I was once carried away by the trend and developed this kind of inferiority complex about my country.

Taken to the extreme, this trend created a type of people who would do anything just to be immigrated to America. They most often became “rebels”, writing and speaking about all the bad things in the country and called for “action” from everyone. While some of the rebels were people who truly believed in what they preached, a lot of them were just opportunists who just wanted to earn all the riches of America. Their plan? To get the government to arrest them, so that they could get their “label” of “prisoners of thought” and get freedom organizations from around the world to evacuate them from the corrupted government. And what they talked about? Exaggerated stories of “humanity” and “corruption”, or even outright made-up conspiracy theories.

The man in your video had the same energy as those complainers and conspiracy nuts, showing “facts” that are just one wind blow away from reality, and saying them in the most provocative way possible to fish strong reaction from people. This is the same tactic the Youtubers, bloggers and general nutjobs in my country used. I don’t blame people for being carried away by him, he plays into our emotion and overdrives our thinking. But if you stop and question, this is when he stops getting to your head.

I have long grown out of my angsty period and developed enough critical thinking skills to know that no country is perfect and I should judge everything case-by-case. And now, every time I see someone complaining or comparing my country to another country with little fact to back their claim up, I mentally check out of the conversation. And when I see an American doing the same thing, I just laugh and say “you are silly to think your country is the worst country ever, for you are too sheltered to know what’s really going on in the world”.

Nowadays my country is facing another problem though: toxic patriotism. This is just the other sign of the coin of the complaining problem. People defend things that shouldn’t be defended at all just because it’s from my country. It’s getting really dangerous when greedy companies are now capitalizing on this mentality to sell products in unethical ways. People are just moving from one extreme to another :(

Thank you Mimi. The OP who has labeled Americans as “silly” or the poster here who labels the Chinese as “worker drones” and the Americans as “teenage rebels” is just as bad as the people they are denigrating. This person is not the only one who does this. Fluther is populated with people who are fond of pasting labels on other people.

Bottom line, any time you just mindlessly label a whole people group like that, you have already stopped listening- or caring. But it is certainly easier, I’ll give you that.

”developed enough critical thinking skills to know that no country is perfect”
Psssst…

Until comparatively recently, we Americans have been afforded extraordinary leeway in the degree of silliness and lazy thinking we can get away with. This has NEVER been the case in China where even the hint of such traits as frivolity or distraction from survival assured the swift extinction of all exhibiting them. That luxury has shifted here, and far too many of us are unprepared for it. Mahr is correct. We are presently a nation of fat people, distinguished NOW for our proclivity for lazy thinking. It is difficult to explain how we are to avoid the price for it. And we will pay dearly and soon.

@Mimishu1995 I found the same thing on my visits to mainland China. Chinese people admire the west and particularly the United States. The ambition of every parent is to sent their children to American universities to be educated.

China’s progress in the last fifty or sixty years has been phenomenal. It has done in decades what took centuries in the west but the Chinese realise they haven’t done this on their own but by copying our economic model. That is why they hold the west in such high regard. The oldest generation of Chinese remember hunger and starvation. That doesn’t happen anymore.

The comparisons you can make between China and the United States are endless and fascinating but you will have trouble finding anyone in China saying the US is “silly”, even after the last few years.

Do you know that half of Americans have an I.Q. under 100? – quote from some rich white guy 50 years ago.

Also, every time an American emigrates to Canada the average IQ of both countries goes down.

@flutherother I don’t get it?

@RedDeerGuy1
It means the smarter than average colonials are still dumber than the below average Canadians.

@ragingloli Thanks.

When they get religion out of their lives.

I think Mahr is right about some of it. I agree with him that there is something in-between how America functions now and how China runs. America used to be that country with more integrity, more rational decisions, and a combination of capitalism and government initiatives. China now is changing too, more capitalism is allowed, but it’s still a communist country.

America does feel sometimes to me like it is losing its way and not acting in an honest and mature manner. That is disappointing.

As far as super fabulous airports and old infrastructure, I agree we need to repair and update, but since America was very early in the industrial revolution and modernization, that means we live with more old technology and structures now compared to countries that just started modernizing in the last 50 years.

China builds quickly, but they also have examples of people being pushed too hard in school and work, the government not caring about poisoning the air and land and other problems that America (most of America) finds unacceptable. Again, there is probably an in-between that is more ideal.

Regarding covid, China had it more right than America, but I would say Taiwan did it in a more in-between way that was better. I’m tired of such black and white thinking in America. It makes for bad decisions and hypocrisy.

When it comes to Dr. Seuss, what’s most silly is Republicans blaming the Democrats, the Democrats did not ban the books, the Seuss family chose to stop publishing them. Does a drawing of a Chinese man with a punted hat and chopsticks offend Chinese people? My guess is there are still Chinese people using those hats and we know they use chopsticks. I understand why it’s a problem to stereotype people, but are we know saying people who eat with sticks should be ashamed? If so I need to warn my husband the next time we eat at an Asian restaurant.

I honestly haven’t read those Seuss books recently, and some not at all, so maybe I would agree the books are offensive if I read it all in context, I don’t know. I do think it’s important children’s books don’t promote negative feelings towards a group. When I was a kid I wasn’t taught different clothing or eating utensils were negative, it was just different, and often those things were very practical. Not different than an American farmer wearing overalls and a hat and someone in the city wearing a suit and dress shoes. Neither is bad.

I just wrote a lot about Seuss, but I think my point is Americans too often are getting wound up when there are much more important things to focus on. We are constantly manipulated and most of the population seems unaware of it.

American silliness is simply jaw-dropping. https://youtu.be/R-XDCZhOnIo