You could post this in c/askchapo or lemmygrads question comm, for future reference. As others have said, here is fine too.

This reads to me like there was some context left out (I assume be accident), possibly communication difficulties that you weren’t aware of. I really need to think there were other things said or maybe wording that implied something you didn’t mean, or something like that, because it’s a very unnatural reaction.

If what you relayed is the full and accurate picture, the person you are talking to is hopelessly unstable and you did nothing wrong. In the future, to avoid stepping on landmines, it would probably be good to start with some less challenging questions to see how they respond before you give them a prompt as heavy as what you gave. A lot of people aren’t ready to be given such a challenge so abruptly, and might feel like they’ve been ambushed or “put on the spot”.

Pocketfish did nothing wrong.

Not an American, but have spent a lot of time there. They have two right wing liberal parties, and a political system that actively resists any changes to that setup. As a result, they think that those are the two political extremes, and everything between them is centrist. Anyone outside of that is an extremist and not worthy of consideration. So when you criticise their party of choice, you obviously must be on the “other” side of the political spectrum, which to them is the other US political party.

They just don’t know any better, it’s outside of their realm of experience.

Settler-colonies I would say fundamentally operate on a completely different Overton window from normal countries. I’d say you can blame this exchange student’s thin skin on her being close to institutional power; you can blame the “seeing anyone who doesn’t support her form of fascism for being the other type of fascist in her country” on her spending most of her life completely isolated from actually having to face the contradictions of settler society; and you can blame the general tribalism of national politics in the USA at least partially on settlers needing to absolve themselves of guilt by demonizing the “other side” that supports 95% of the same things.

I’ve started to informally distinguish between three types of US citizen abroad: my own type are “Americans”, we are polar opposites to “Seppos”, and between us Americans and those Seppos is an unstable middle ground that I call “Usonians”.

From my own typology, I might label the exchange student you met as a “Seppo” just from this description — her refusing to speak to you means that she is likely wholly disinterested in, and will in all likelihood actively try to avoid through kicking and screaming if necessary, coming to terms with the contradictions surrounding your country’s relationship to the USA, and what this relationship says about the USA itself. If she intends on returning to the USA after she is done with her studies, she must actively not build roots in the local community in which she now resides, and making her confront her own relationship to imperialism and settler-colonialism quite simply interferes with this.

The outburst you witnessed is in other words what I consider a “repair strategy” through which the settler-colony prevents “settler hemorrhage”.

However, I could always be mistaken and she might really be typologically more like a Usonian — that despite that outburst you witnessed, she could actually one day become informed and genuinely empathetic, in which case she could become an American. But I have an image of what the typical US-born exchange student is like, and with the class background I’m imagining, I wouldn’t bet on winning her over to our side.

In the US there are no real politics. Average people have near zero power to affect any change in their country. So the concept of engaging in politics has shifted to solely a cultural identity.

Now even though they cannot effect their material conditions positively in this system, the people still driven to adopt these cultural identities still get something that matters to them out of their participation. One group gets to punish those they hate/satisfy their anger and hatred of libs (this is the republicans the more opening fascist party). The other group - the liberals - who tend to be more affluent, college educated, etc. vote for the democratic party to feel morally superior/assuage guilt for being affluent/college educated in the most unequal nation on earth.

Interrogating an American liberal on their positions regarding politics is to them an assualt on the foundation of their superior moral character - which is soley defined by “voting blue no matter who.” To call into question the lesser evil of the democratic party is to say that they are not a good person.

In short, the US is not okay. We are never sending our best. Death to America of course

Speaking as someone from the US my whole life who became communist only in recent years, my general sense is people like me are raised to think that: 1) the world revolves around the US and everything else is secondary to it (not true). 2) the US is a people’s democracy (it isn’t). 3) democrats are the more moderate/progressive party (they aren’t, if they ever were truly - maybe going back to the FDR coalition, they were a bit).

But if you believe all 3 of these, and you strongly believe that Trump is a threat to a people’s democracy, then you might have a strong reaction to the idea of not supporting the alternative. To be clear, I’m not saying their behavior is reasonable at all. But I can kind of see how they arrive at it, with headspaces I’ve been in at times in the past, and the propaganda people tend to believe in the US.

Tbh, they sound like they are deep in western chauvinism, coming to your Eastern European country and yelling at you about their elections. As if you are supposed to be involved in it too somehow (this is where point 1 comes in). You did nothing wrong. Blue maga, aka: “vote blue no matter who”, the special brand of USian liberal who has adopted a stance of voting for a half-eaten ham sandwich over voting for Donald Trump, is not well-grounded in reality. In effect, I think whether they realize it consciously or not as what it is in substance, they are panicked about the neoliberal order crumbling and being replaced with naked fascism (e.g. no decorum to cover it up), but they lack the framework with which to see the neoliberal order as already being fascistic, so to them this is the absolute worst case scenario for their country and life. Meanwhile, people who see beneath the curtain are going like, “Is it really the worst thing if liberals start to see the US for what it is, rather than continuing to believe in the pomp and ceremony?” Migrant kids in cages went from being an issue liberals cared about under Trump to being a nothing under Biden.

People in this state of mind are effectively duped by the liberal decorum and really believe it’s better for that reason.

American Liberals are above all else defined by a smugness that is backed by a total and complete naiveness of the word without the inability to understand that Socialists/Communists still exist in the world outside of the US and China. American Liberals believe their is only one opposition to their views, the uneducated unwashed masses who is backward in character and without any virtue.

American Liberalism is largely a believe of credentialism that simultaneously somehow proves their moral virtue.

You did nothing wrong, the American liberals are getting now little bit too emotional. It kind of turns out, that it’s not the opposite side but them who are acting very morally badly, similar to well known regimes in past which they love to mention so much…

When you believe you’re working to save the world, you come to think that anyone who opposes you is a fool and react thusly.

Is this bait?

Edit: not that I don’t think liberals can be absolutely insane, but calling you a trump supporter when you aren’t even American is too on the nose

All true believer liberals are, ever notice that the biggest political party in america is ‘undecided’?

The deranged nature of american liberalism isnt lost on them either.

They act like the entire world is USA, thinks like them and has the exact same mindset and point of view as them, that’s why you’ll see bullshit about 4th July or elections from a country on the other side of the planet every single time even if you’re from Transnistria, Zimbabwe or Nauru. And they get extremely offended when you insult their war criminals, cops in this case, genocidal maniacs or slave owners(depending on whom you’re talking about) since they’re their national heroes and have a cult of personality but literally. Same thing with their shitty ass-wiper flag. This mentality is exclusive to them.

wait is this for real? they sound like a CIA bot. they are brainwashed. the US has the best propaganda in the world and definitely the largest propaganda budget.

In addition to the other responses, we don’t have much nuance in our political conversations. Partially because we hear the same thing repeatedly but also because other views don’t break into our bubble that often. It ends up framing everything much more like a script to be followed. If you’re challenging the “left-wing” candidate, you must be doing so from the stance of someone who supports the right-wing candidate. That’s the script. And very often, those roles come with baggage (eg, ‘trump supporter’, ‘misogynist’, etc.). So because you have put yourself in one of those roles/boxes, the script in their mind is being followed, and you’ve taken on that baggage.

You can see this in our media discussions as well. Who likes what movies, franchises, why, etc. Many people are unaware that they are acting this prescriptively, so we often talk past each other and rarely act in as good of faith as we think we are engaging in. Neo-liberalism is built on flexible word choices, slogans, and terms without meaning. This results in a lot of reverse terminology, empty words, and a clinging of identity and labels around more solid terms. The latter has the effect of simplifying people and positions into boxes that result in script-like behavior due to regurgitating known responses and interactions with people in that label over there. The implication that you might not fit that label demands an immediate and intense examination of the subject matter in a few seconds or risk not appearing smart/moral/etc. So not only is that a threat to their image, but it’s a lot of internal pressure in a short time—hince the response you got from them was very reflexive and combative.

Because most Americans have been fooled into thinking that all possible scenarios in politics are found by the two parties, as right as humanly possible are the Republicans and left as humanly possible are the Democrats with “moderates”* in between…

So any attack on Kamala means that you are literally MAGA.

• “American moderates” tend to know absolutely nothing whatsoever about politics. These people don’t even watch the news or follow politics at all but usually vote because they’re bored or some misplaced feeling of civic duty.