Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?

  • Hyperreality
    11•11 months ago

    Off the top of my head and IRC:

    • Belgium (different languages, laws, educational systems, public broadcasters per language region, taxation, etc.)

    • UK (different laws in Scotland, different laws in Northern Ireland, education policy, etc.)

    • Spain (autonomous regions with their own languages, seperate civil law in Catalunya, tax collection in the Basque country, etc.)

    • Canada (IRC Quebec has a Napoleonic inspired civil law system, whereas the rest of Canada uses common law similar to that found in the US and UK. TLDR one legal system uses precedent, the other doesn’t. )

    • China (the unofficial city tier system, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc.)

    • Russia (autonomous regions in the far east, Kadyrov/Chechnya: strict alcohol prohibition and possibly years in jail, etc.)

    • India (IRC autonomous administrative divisions can make their own laws, tribe/caste based laws/tribunals, Jammu and Kashmir which until quite recently had its own seperate consitution and for example Indians from other regions weren’t allowed to buy land or property there.)

    The problem is that as a foreigner, you’re usually ignorant about all these things. Whether it’s a Brit who thinks all Americans are Yankees, an American who thinks all Brits are English, a Scotsman who thinks Spanish and Castellano are synonymous, or a Spaniard who goes to Belgium expecting to speak French everywhere.

    • @Pipoca@lemmy.world
      1•10 months ago

      According to etymonline, Yankee has been used to refer to different sets of Americans by different people for hundreds of years.

      1683, a name applied disparagingly by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. … In English a term of contempt (1750s) before its use as a general term for “native of New England” (1765); during the American Revolution it became a disparaging British word for all American natives or inhabitants. Contrasted with southerner by 1828. Shortened form Yank in reference to “an American” first recorded 1778.

      The British calling someone from Texas a Yankee isn’t really any more right or wrong than someone from Texas calling someone from Pennsylvania a Yankee. Words can have contextual meanings.