I started watching YouTuber Evan Edinger recently and it’s been a breath of fresh air because he’s been saying things I understood to be true a long time ago, but never quite verified until now.
One of those being about American exceptionalism and how Americans will only ever make judgement about other countries (including the EU) from the highly deformed perspective of their local news. And they’ll do this, knowingly, with no remorse, because they’ve been taught all their life America is the best so there are no reasons to doubt or consider that things aren’t quite right.
Being a continent away, with no idea what is going on over here, americans don’t understand EU culture, nor how it relates to German culture. Fox News does not understand what exactly happened in that particular case you linked, let alone you who is reading a ragebait-fueled summary of it.
You also clearly don’t understand how the European Commission works and what it is able to actually do.
Should I bother correcting you? Of course not: you are most likely not interested otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation. The information is available freely online if you so desire and if you are willing to get out of your comfortable bubbles that constantly prioritise the aforementioned American exceptionalism.
There is no such thing, and has never been. Europeans are different people with different cultures. No matter how much hackers and global projects want to exterminate those cultures and those people.
The equivalent would be to talk about "Mercosul culture" or "NAFTA culture". Or why not "NATO culture", or "BRICS culture"?
As someone who's lived in 7 different european countries throughout my life, I feel like I can confidently speak on the matter and yes, there is an EU culture. This does not mean there isn't also cultures individual to the countries, just like the latter doesn't mean there aren't cultures individual to regions or cities.
(You'd think this last part is obvious, and yet it seems it has to be spelled out for some, who'd rather pick random acronyms to strawman a culture question onto, than use common sense.)
PS- For the sake of your mental health, work on popping that bubble of yours you seem to live inside of.
There's something of a common European culture, which has existed for centuries. Note: "European", not "EU". The EU is a steel tariffs union which has grown in scope to become an attempt of making member countries states in a federation.
The common European culture is foremost christianity, and secondly renaissance values, as well as nationalism. The latter mostly in domestic matters, such as welfare. But those values aren't exclusively European.
> For the sake of your mental health
Are you proud of expressing yourself in this way? Probably you're blowing off steam online anonymously, but if you rage and insult like this in real life whenever somebody doesn't agree with your opinions, you're not going to have fruitful interactions with other people.
There is no rage in my comments — I have better things to do than get upset at things online. I took a look at your own comment history however and it is … scary. Hence the “for the sake of your mental health”.
And yes there is an EU culture as well; just like there is a US culture not just a North American culture.
As someone that lived in 4 different European countries, I can tell you, you only talk nonsense.
Go tell a Spanish or an Italian, that is normal for the authorities to go and investigate him and put him in jail for calling someone fat.
It's fascinating the amount of bullocks that comes out of your keyboard with an aura of self-righteous intellectuality, as if you are preaching some universal acepted gospel.
Buddy all you’re trying to do with all the screeching in this thread is pick an online fight with someone who doesn’t care about you. You haven’t answered any of the other people who contradicted you. Go tell someone else on a noisier forum they’re self-righteous if you want to elicit a reaction, cause I’m not interested.
> You're linking a US media website, one famous for having its head way up the american exceptionalism hole.
Oh, I didn’t notice we are already in the censorship phase and we can’t even link Fox News. It’s a factual news (but you are free to contest it) and if Fox is the only one willing to publish it, it says more about European descent into madness than you think.
> Also, didn't you vote to not call yourself European or something-something?
What are you even talking about? You people are insane. You need to be stopped before you destroy us all.
If Fox is the only one willing to publish it, it says a lot about the news story itself.... Whilst they may time to time have some journalism I'm sure, it's not a respectable news organisation in the same way as AP or Reuters and such. If it was a decent story it would be picked up on and re-reported by other outlets. There is not some conspiracy where all other journalists refuse to publish the 'truth'...
As I said above: Fox is not reputable, and if they’re the only one willing to run a story, that’s not someone speaking truth to power — it’s the equivalent to a wacko conspiracy theorist being the only person agreeing with you. Not a good sign, and not one that will get you taken seriously.
Whether the story has legs can be evaluated independently, and others have done so (it is indeed a non-story that was simply used as rage bait, which you and the other guy are falling for hard). But a lot of time can be saved simply dismissing fox as a sole source, because they have this reputation, and it’s earned.
Fox News does not have a reputation of reporting on facts, which seems to be your only claim here that this is “factual”. If it were, you’d find this in a neutral source. It’s a waste of time to even argue with you as I had predicted.
1. German authorities demanded GAB to disclosure the real identity of a user that called - a morbidly obese - politician, fat, so that they can persecute him.
Now, you can go on with your little show, pretending to be in your high horse where news that shows from Fox News don't count, so that you don't have to actually address the facts.
In Germany, Beleidigung has been a criminal offense for decades. Courts (not "authorities") can compel platforms to identify users after due process. No one is being "persecuted", no one is going to a "gulag", and weight is irrelevant.
If you want to argue that criminal defamation laws are bad, do that. But stop dressing an old legal reality up as dystopia.
This is a lot of pearl-clutching for someone who opened with an insult and then ran out of substance. If you have an actual counterargument, try that. Otherwise, spare us the theatrics.
One of those being about American exceptionalism and how Americans will only ever make judgement about other countries (including the EU) from the highly deformed perspective of their local news. And they’ll do this, knowingly, with no remorse, because they’ve been taught all their life America is the best so there are no reasons to doubt or consider that things aren’t quite right.
Being a continent away, with no idea what is going on over here, americans don’t understand EU culture, nor how it relates to German culture. Fox News does not understand what exactly happened in that particular case you linked, let alone you who is reading a ragebait-fueled summary of it.
You also clearly don’t understand how the European Commission works and what it is able to actually do.
Should I bother correcting you? Of course not: you are most likely not interested otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation. The information is available freely online if you so desire and if you are willing to get out of your comfortable bubbles that constantly prioritise the aforementioned American exceptionalism.