Thanks it is not always easy to find a balance and sometimes one shoots from the hip without reflecting.

But just sayin, it does seem to have become a second nature for writers on this Medium to find a way to throw out America as a PC scapegoat on every topic. Maybe it earns points with the reader demographic, I don't know.

You are not thinking about writers such as Indi Samarajiva and Umair Haque by any chance? I quite like their writing even if even I think it can get overly negative and one-sided at times in the characterization of America.

I remember chancing upon Umair Haque once and thinking I had found a fellow soul. Somebody with some of the same viewpoints about problems in the US. But eventually I thought: Man, even I am not THAT negative. He is a good writer though. It is like he turns negativity to an artform or something.

Keep in mind though that you are most likely reading in English. Articles not written in English will have quite a different perspective and be less focused on the US. The US gets into focus naturally when the language is English.

But just as you espouse your Danish and Greek roots, we are proud of our homeland too. Right or wrong, nobody needs to hear this stream of negativity from outsiders.

Naturally likes their country dragged through the mud. However one has to also realize the US isn't just any country.

The US is the most important country in the world. The only remaing super power. It completely dominates the world militarily, economically and culturally. With that comes a lot of privilege that Americans enjoy.

I am writing this to you in your language. You don't have to learn mine. You don't have to understand Norwegian culture to communicate with me. But I have to understand American culture and sensitivities.

If we do business, it will be in your language. The contract will be in your language and payment will likely happen using your currency. The US dollar is the intermediate for most international trade. Look at Iran, when Trump blocked Iranian use of American banks, it almost collapsed the economy, even if they were not directly trading with the US. That is what a central role the US play in the economic macnhinery of the whole world.

It is something Americans benefit enormously from. It allows the US to borrow lots of money cheap and run huge trade deficits with minimal consequences.

What singles you out for criticism is also what makes the US the number one destination for talent around the world. Hollywood, Netflix, Youtube etc makes America the best known and understood culture in the world. If you are looking for opportunities outside your own borders it is one of the most natural choices.

Think about how half of US nobel prizes are by immigrants. Half of American tech startups are by immigrants.

In contrast pretty much nobody knows Norwegian culture and language, and that is not unqiue to Norway. Europe itself is a patchwork of small states each with their own unique languages and cultures.

That will put off talented immigrants looking for opporuntities. They likely already know English. Why learn another obscure language and take the risk of living in an odd little European country you have no idea what is like? America is a way safer choice. You know the langugea, and you already have a good sense of the culture from Hollywood, Netlfix and countless other forms of media.

But this familiarity is also what lets a lot of us foreigners jump into the American debates. A lot of us have been in the US, studied there, and exposed to its media. Most of the books I read for my university studies were probably written by some American.

Or at least they were written in English. There is not enough of a markeet to write about say ray-traying algorithms in Norwegian. English is the lingua franca of technology, scienece and business.

That is a huge benefit for every American. The price you got to pay for that is more exposure and more criticism.

Some of it is baked into the nature of American culture. It is a country of extremes that invites both love and hate. In America you find the fittest people and the most unhealthy. The smartest and the most ignorant. Some of the richest and poorest people (by the standard of a developed country).

I wrote a bit about this in an article where I compared life in America and Scandinavia. I characterize America as a sort of amplifier machine. It amplifies both the good and the bad things: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/is-scandinavia-better-to-live-in-than-the-usa-2064f6776eae