America is the only country I know that can call themselves world champions in a sport no other country plays.

I like disney world, universal studios and new york xmas time. Your gun laws scare the shit out of me. It always shocks me how some of you can't believe that a black person can have an "English" accent.

I have always found it strange that you can call people african american but get offended when I say well are you european American?


Nice talkative people. Sometime too nice but that's just nit picking. Here in England I'm used to people just grunting at me if I say hello lol

America really is a hermit kingdom but with that said the nation is huge and you would never really have to leave it to experience many different things.
Like to visit but its just not home. Too patriotic for me but in general its a lovely country.

Last thing


It is pronounced e talian. NOT I talian.
Your welcome :D

There are just three things that piss me off about the U.S.

- the imperial system of measurements ( c´mon... it´s not that difficult to adopt the easier metric system, or at least label their products with it....)
- the insistence in treating regional continental divisions as separate continents (North/South/Central America). Thankfully, not all Americans agree with that and many don´t care. But those who care have a tendency to be very, very vocal about it, to the point of hating those who don´t agree. It seems that they don´t like to think that they live in the same continent as Venezuela or Brazil.
- lack of paid maternity leave. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee paid maternity leave. Heck, not even job security is guaranteed. Why such lack of love for working mothers?...

As for the rest, I think U.S. is a great nation. Its culture, music, scientific development, media, entertainment industry, entepreneurship and sports passion inspire many other countries.
Can´t say much about the government, but horrible government is everywhere in the world, specially in my country.

Unfortunately living in the Middle East we haven't had a great relationship with America. However, I have visited New York before and have to say the citizens are great with a lot of friendly people compared to other cities. Everyone who lives there loves it, and a lot of them being Arab Muslims. As a community, and I know no community is perfect, it's friendly and diverse (maybe not in every state but on the whole it is) .

Unfortunately it's how you judge America within its borders vs outside its borders. The government is pretty nosey. It's not the only country that is mind you, and political games are played by many countries including our countries in the Middle East, but their influence is by far the largest especially in our region. Their support for regimes like Saudi for instance is something that has had bad repercussions in our region, and frankly disgraceful in how they supposedly promote democracy and freedom of speech. I won't say that everything they do is bad, but more or less it is calculated which is why people are wary of them in my parts of the world. Again not just an American thing but their position as the super power of the world allows them to be the most influential.

I do like it as a whole, and I am engrossed in the politics and the culture, and it seems like a good place to live in. I love the music that comes out from there, the diversity of the people and yes it's not perfect but I always say that it has to do a lot with people bringing up these issues when in other parts of the world it's kept locked in a closet.

So I'm just judging it as an outsider, I'm not in a position to judge what happens inside your borders as much as the people who live in it, but it is a good country to live in from what I can see. I think managing to contain a huge territory with many ethnicities and turning it to the most influential country in the world is something to admire and respect.

The US is a big country. Big to the point that its difficult to generalise about it.

I see a portion of the country wich is educated and brilliant, but i also see another portion that is ignorant and deplorable. This divise seems very apparent during elections where the results are always very even.
But, because the US is such a big country and holds such international power, this should embue its citizens with an added sense of responsibility for its role in the world, and not only internally. Sadly, i see alot of disregard for that fact and even on these forums you can see irresponsable comments of the sort "i will vote on this guy just to see what happens". There is no "just see". Once someone is put into power you can't unsee them.

As for the isolationist argument. That has been proven to be a very bad idea. Because the US is a deterrent power. Without a deterrent power, other powers will feel stronger and in the hands of the wrong person, things can escalate. Wich was the case in WW1 and especially 2.

Imagine this scenario: The US says they are neutral and wont interfere on any conflicts in the world. The remaining powers in the world will go unchecked. Imagine Putin just decides to invade Ukraine... because who will stop him? After that he thinks the same. If no one will stop me, why dont i get Belarus and others aswell. Who can stop me? At that point the european powers are in a deadlock with Russia, but can they stop them? It would be difficult. Putin could go Hitler style on Europe. If he suceeds on that, he will have the largest power in the world and then he can come for the US next in a bid for supremecy. Who can challenge him?

This is just one example. Any small power unchecked can become a huge problem later, that is why the US allied with western europe are the biggest deterrents to world war 3. They are the allies that brought an end to WW2 and led the democracies of the world to victory. If you break that, history may very well repeat itself, just like it did in the 1940's. The greed of man has no limits. If you give someone enough power and leeway to think they can get away with it, they will murder to get what they want.

I see several posts here defending this isolatonist pov and i am very saddened by it. The reason why the US plays police force is to prevent more tragedies like what WW2 was(though we are not naive to the point of thinking that there arent economic interests at play aswell). This is exactly the irresponsibility that i fear from the american people. Will more tragedies have to repeat themselves for the american people to remember why it is things got to this? Without the allies the world will be a ticking time bomb just waiting for the next mad man.

edit: That got a bit depressing. Thought i'd add something more positive. Love american movies, series and games. So thats good. :)

I agree with you that the USA is a very big country and it's very devided. But I don't agree with you that it's good that they are involving as a kind of world police force. This because most of the reasons of the conflicts are done because of this so called world police force. Look at a lot of countries which normally were small countries, but after WWII in coop with the USA are put together to create one country! The USA (also other govnerments in the world) have really no idea that you  can't just put different cultures together and make one country and think this will work out because you have the dictator/leader under controll! There are quite some examples of countries which have been complete disaster master plans from USA (with help with other Western countries). And therefore eventhough Russia and China are emerging countries which could be very powerfull in the near future and also scary, the most scary country currently is the USA with their manipulation. I have the feeling that USA is not really driven by the govnerment but by big companies which want to spread and have more influence in the world and therefore they mangle in all countries!

Your point about Putin I don't agree at all. I don't even think he would like to have any of the European countries currently! (He would get more problems than gaining anything) Puttin is only targeting old Sovjet countries and to be honest it's not so strange, because maybe you don't know but many people in those countries like Ukraine would love to be part of Sovjet/Russia again as they have been part of Russia for a long period and eventhough we here in the west don't like the communistic ways, I think they think the same way about our kapatilistic and so called Democratic govnerments! You can't force certain countries/cultures to change because you don't like their ways! And this is the biggest thing I hate about the USA Govnerment and also a lot of European politics that they are trying to change middle east countries into democratic countries. A lot of countries are still not really one united country and have smaller groups which rule and have (sometimes only minor) religious differences and therefore don't want to work together with the other groups, so why would we force those people to work with each other? 

Ok, i obviously needed to make it clearer that the Puttin mention was an "what if" example as he is the one that would be closer to that atm. Its not a situation that can happen immediatly, but without deterrents i think it will just be a matter of time until another crazy lunatic with visions of grandeur comes along and thinks he can get what he wants and be unpunished.

Also, i dont think those EX-USSR countries are nearly as eager to go back as you say, or they wouldnt have separated in the first place.

As for your other point about small countries... Well... i have not really adressed that. I said that the USA should be a deterrance force, but how often and how they use their force is a different issue. What i wouldn't like to see is for the US to just go: "Look, we don't care anymore, we are just gonna mind our own business." . That is what i'm worried about. A green card for lunatics to think they can.

As a Brazilian, I really don´t have any problems with U.S. citizens calling themselves as "Americans". They don´t have a specific word for their nationality - as "estadunidense" or "ianque", in Portuguese and Spanish, "statunitense" in Italian, or "étasunien" in French , so they just say "american" and  the meaning of the word depends of the context in a sentence.

But, I think it can  be annoying when they refer to their country as "America" (like in the O.P.), because we all know America is a continent, and that can be confusing at times. As you said, every person in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile etc. can say that they live in America, and they won´t be wrong. I try to see it as a "nickname" they use to their country, but it would be just easier to use U.S. and avoid the therm "America" when talking to foreigners.

Generally this is the logic behind it. Eurasia has a better claim to being a single continent than America. 

Following that logic Indians live in the Australian continent, there's a Nazca continent that counts what, 10M people in the best case (?)

It is more complicated than the map suggests. There are many different definitions geologists use for "continents." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Geology

"Plate tectonics offers yet another way of defining continents. Today, Europe and most of Asia constitute the unified Eurasian Plate, which is approximately coincident with the geographic Eurasian continent excluding India, Arabia, and far eastern Russia. India contains a central shield, and the geologically recent Himalaya mobile belt forms its northern margin. North America and South America are separate continents, the connecting isthmus being largely the result of volcanism from relatively recent subduction tectonics. North American continental rocks extend to Greenland (a portion of the Canadian Shield), and in terms of plate boundaries, the North American plate includes the easternmost portion of the Asian land mass. Geologists do not use these facts to suggest that eastern Asia is part of the North American continent, even though the plate boundary extends there; the word continent is usually used in its geographic sense and additional definitions ("continental rocks," "plate boundaries") are used as appropriate."

Still the point is that no matter how you look at it, whether you classify continents as large areas with geographical barriers, or use plates the Americas have more grounds to be separate continents than Europe and Asia. So if one considers the Americas to be a single continent then so should they Eurasia.

In some countries this is the case as well.

http://www.universetoday.com/45468/how-many-continents-are-there/

"Well, in Russia, Eastern Europe and Japan, the people there consider the continents of Europe and Asia as one, known as Eurasia. In other places in the world, North and South America are combined as one American continent while separating Europe and Asia instead. Thus, according to these two views, there should only be 6 continents.

There are even geographical views that prefer the presence of both a Eurasian as well as one American continent. These geographers therefore contend that there should only be 5 continents. "

"

These people argue that, since Europe and Asia are actually part of one great land mass and that Asia and Africa are actually joined by an isthmus (Isthmus of Suez), as are the two Americas (being joined by the Isthmus of Panama), then there should be an Afro-Eurasian continent in addition to one American continent, Antarctica, and Australia."

"But how many continents are there according to the more widely accepted view? In the most widely accepted view, there are 7 continents all in all: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Australia."

Nothing is right or wrong here, fortunately. It is all based on how one defines a "continent" and how strict said definition is.