General Opinions
Some American with a YouTube channel posted something that I considered to be an unnecessary attack on their home country. Here's my thought on that.
I've lived in a few different countries in my life. A couple of years in Canada, a total of five in Germany (I speak German fairly fluently), and a total of nine years in the UK. I'm a dual citizen of the US and UK. I started a YouTube channel documenting what I've found in the county of Sussex in the UK, where I currently live.
Do you know what I do not do, and will never do on my YouTube channel? I will not disparage my birth country talking about supposed "myths" or other problems. I do recognize that some things work better than others in one country or another. The US health care system can be very problematic, yes. But if the people of the US actually wanted a national health care system like that of the UK or Canada, then they would demand one. There is a political party in the US that would dearly love to provide it. But the majority of Americans don't want one. Complain about it if you want, but the US is a democratic country.
The same thing goes for guns. The majority don't want to give up their guns. And what Europeans don't seem to get is that millions of Americans would literally rebel against the government if the government decided to do what Australia did, and try to confiscate their guns. And do they realize that if all the law-abiding citizens gave up their guns, the only ones left in private hands would be those held by criminals? We already have serious problems with lawless people using guns to commit crimes -- and it must be pointed out that those places with the most of this kind of crime are the ones with the strongest gun-control laws.
People in Europe sometimes make a big issue out of the fact that most Americans don't have passports, and don't speak any other language than English. What they don't seem to realize is that I can drive my car from Los Angeles to New York City, something like 3,000 miles, and never leave the country, nor find anyone who speaks any other language. Americans don't have to leave their country in order to see amazing things. Deserts, mountains, lakes, rivers, forests, even temporate rain forests, and everything in between, can be had without the need to hold a passport or speak anything other than English.
On the other hand, if I could drive my car in an absolutely straight line from Lisbon, Portugal to Uralsk Orap, Kazahkstan, a distance of 3,000 miles, I would cross 12 international boundaries, and pass through areas in which 10 different languages (and multiple dialects) are spoken. Most people in Europe live just a short drive away from places where other languages are spoken.
So stop making these "my birth country sucks" videos. People in Europe think their countries are superior to everyone else's too. I've run into them, so I know they exist.
