Te USA is a big place. And any place this big will have all sorts of extreme behavior. You can certainly find it in Europe too, if you look hard enough and keep an open mind.
Everything you said is true somewhere here. But I think you are drawing your conclusions from a very narrow viewpoint. Things you have read, and a few people you personally know. And you are choosing to believe things that reinforce the biases you already hold.
Like you, I have my own biases, that are based on my own experiences. I have found that many Europeans are constantly preaching to America about how much more intelligent they are, and how much more compassionate, and how much less violent they are. And mind you, these are the descendents of the same people who invented feudalism, colonialism, imperialism, communism, fascism and racial genocide.
We are constantly denounced for having slavery 200 years ago, while it was the Dutch and the Portuguese were the slave traders who brought slavery to this continent. It seems to me no one was innocent, except the slaves themselves.
Of course, those things happened a long time ago, and it would be foolish to hold anyone in Europe responsible today for all the ills Europe imposed upon the world. But it does illustrate that many Europeans have no understanding of their own history.
You rarely see Americans behaving that arrogantly. We don't think we are superior to anyone. We just know we are different. Someone asked a question as to why our culture was different, as if being different was a crime in and of itself. I tried to explain why, and you took offense at my response. For that, I offer my sincere apology. I won't let it happen again.
As far as people fleeing the USA, the facts seem to support the exact opposite case. While people will always travel to and from the USA for jobs, there was a whopping total of 1,800 American citizens who actually
renounced their citizenship last year. And this was from a population of 315,000,000 people.
On the other hand,
last year around 700,000 foreign born people became naturalized as US citizens, and another 1,000,000 or so became permanent residents. And this doesn't include the illegal immigrants who are estimated to be between 500,0000 and 1,000,000 more each year. Around 13% of our population is foreign born right now, so if anyone is fleeing the USA, they are dwarfed by the numbers who come here to take their places.
People do move back and forth between Canada and the USA for various reasons, but when it comes to actually immigration, the percentage of Canadians who move to the USA is three times higher than the percentage of US Citizens who emigrate to Canada. Of course in absolute numbers, those "fleeing the USA" is greater, because our population is ten times larger. But the rates tell you that there is no mass exodus from the USA,. Just the opposite, in fact. Canada loses a higher percentage of their population to the USA each year than the reverse.
While you probably read my post as some sort of xenophobic rant, I suggest you re-read it. I was trying to answer the question honestly, without supplying any criticism of any other nation, and plenty of criticism for the USA. I mentioned that we are wasteful, and that we spend money that we don't have, and that it will lead to no good end. Why you took this as an affront to the Netherlands escapes me completely.
