I suppose I dislike the stereotype that Americans are all overly patriotic and gun obsessed, that’s a good chunk of Americans, but I’d like to think they are just a very loud minority who “”““somehow””“” keep getting to make the laws unfortunately. Many of us are reasonable, many of us are anti-gun, many of us are certainly not patriotic, and most of us are not alt-right fuckfaces.

I’ll start with one. I’ve frequently run across the notion that American friendliness must be “fake.” I’m sure that happens, but I find that it’s more about being raised with a different standard for the baseline of a social interaction, and particularly of the acceptable ceiling. An English person and an American could each have roughly the same emotional response to a stranger, but the American will have been socialized that the proper way (or at least a proper way) to express a sort of general appreciation of another’s humanity is to make them feel welcome and seen, by engaging in conversation, where our equally good-natured English friend will have been told that it’s more polite and respectful to give the other person space to get on with their day. It’s true that the American, despite in engaging in behavior that would seem to imply otherwise, doesn’t really want to be your best friend any more than the English person (though they might… America is an extrovert’s dream), but neither are they being fake. There is simply a different set of cultural expectations.