this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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As a Native American this attitude is so grating. People outside the US really don’t seem to understand that it’s 55 different states, districts, and territories, along with dozens of sovereign tribes, all being forced to pretend to be one nation. Many of us can and do claim “this is not us” in the same way many Europeans would say the same about Viktor Orban.
"Why don't Americans just march on DC and take their country back??"
If I lived in Lisbon, Portugal, Moscow would be the equivalent distance of how far away DC is from me.
States, districts, territories are not the same as different countries. Viktor Orban is not an European leader same as Jagmeet Singh is not an American leader.
My distinctions are real, yours are just lines on a map
Typical American answer all Europeans are the same while America supposedly changes every any arbitrary distance.
I can't and don't want to argue with your point, however in the faceless internet space unless you specify you speak from the name of a specific subgroup, the blanket 'American' is implied. It's not a lack of understanding, it's a lack of context.
Contrary to that Europe doesn't have one cohesive identity, your example of Orban is multiple country borders removed from me personally. I don't have the power to vote for/against him or influence that country in any way, where that's different in your case.
I’m not sure why you would reply if you didn’t want to argue but okay.
Thinking that individual European countries have local identities and states or others don’t is absolutely a lack of understanding and not a lack of context.
That you seem to think that everyone in the US has the power to vote for or against the president would also seem to be a lack of understanding, I chose the leader of a specific country in Europe as my example for that reason.
That's not at all what I said. It's in fact the opposite and because of that I said I can't argue with most of your previous points.
On your latter point, I do lack some understanding on the native reservations, but as far as I know they're still under the governance of the US to some extent. My assumption was they can at least participate in the 'democracy' which affects them immensely. It's very sad that's not the case...
I am a little confused then as you seemed to me to be implying that American as a cultural identity precludes Oklahoman as a for instance but that European would not preclude Scottish as a for instance.
It wasn’t until 1965 that the right of non white citizens to vote was protected and it has been a constant fight since. Currently the administration is arguing that Native Americans arent citizens at all.
In the mean time it’s probably worth pointing out that nobody’s vote for president really counts for anything because of the electoral college. On top of that many of us, including myself, live in ‘winner take all’ states where the person with a plurality or majority of popular votes is awarded all of the electoral votes of that state.
In my lifetime there have been 9 presidential elections; 5 have been won by Democrats, with all 5 also winning the national popular vote. 4 have been Republicans, however only two of those elections were won by the candidate who won the popular vote.
If you don't have the power to vote for the president, you don't live in a democracy.
Precisely…