Lost In Translation: What the Rest of the World Doesn't Get About the United States

I've travelled around and talked to a lot of people in my two years abroad. Inevitably, at some point in the conversation, I get asked "What's up with your country?" The United States' unique economic, defence, and political position in the world gives us a lot of pull, but it also makes people think about us. Like learning the English language, the more someone tries to learn about the American way of things, the more they get confused. Here I've compiled some of those things and some explanations for them.

The United States is not a democracy. It's a constitutional republic. Our elected representatives to the federal legislature represent the people on federal issues, but most issues of personal consequence, such as income and property taxes, criminal justice, firearms regulation, and healthcare systems, are governed by the individual states. This harkens back to our colonial days where each of the original thirteen colonies were established under their own charters. While most wanted a united America independent from the British empire, we didn't want to lose our individual ideals, beliefs, and laws in the process, a practice and belief we carry in our culture to this day.

The Electoral College balances political interests. If the United States was a direct democracy, the entire country would be dominated by large cities and districts. Votes from rural states would be wasted against big city interests. As a backlash, these rural states could reduce their output of staple crops, produce, and meat to apply pressure to their political rivals, causing internal strife and crises. The Electoral College serves to balance every state's interest. It still gives more weight to larger population states, but it gives a voice to those who would otherwise be ignored.

Our president is both our head of state and head of government. Most countries have a president, monarch, or chancellor and a prime minister. The former serves as the head of state, the latter as the head of government, each with specific powers and roles. In the United States, our president is both, which has many legal and diplomatic implications.

Firearms are really popular. Like, really popular. If it weren't for firearms, we would never have seceded from England, and that reality was baked into our constitution for better and worse. Other countries wonder why the United States doesn't just ban firearms, but that would require a constitutional amendment, a fundamental change in culture, and popular support, none of which banning firearms has at the national level. If anything were to cause another civil war in the United States, this issue would be it.

Our defence budget subsidises theirs. Yes, the United States spends a ton of money on national defence, more than the next nine countries combined. However, that is not the full story. The United States subsidizes the defence of much of the world, including Europe, Japan, key shipping routes, the Arctic Circle, and by training partner militaries, with our 750 military bases in more than 80 countries across the world. In return, we get preferential treatment in trade deals, the top seats in international and supranational institutions (like the Supreme Allied Commander - Europe in NATO), and the ability to project our foreign policy far beyond our borders. The United States could reduce our defence budget and overseas footprint and retreat between our two protective oceans, but that would utterly disrupt security and stability across the world.

We only have two borders, but they span the length of the continent. The United States is big. Really big, something few other nationalities understand. We may only have to defend two borders against illegal migration, foreign incursion, terrorism, criminal gangs, and more, but that effectively means defending the entire continent. Our differences of opinion with Canada and Mexico on border issues creates diplomatic friction with our only neighbours, unlike the EU nations who have porous borders between countries. For comparison, the US southern border is longer than the distance from La Linea de la Concepcion, Spain, to Reggio Calabria, Italy.

Our population is almost as large as the European Union's. And we're gaining. That's why our politics are so disunified. Imagine getting Spain, Germany, Hungary, Greece, and Sweden to agree on a single social policy. That's what the United States is like. Fortunately, we haven't surrendered our national sovereignty to a supranational institution, and individual states will fight vehemently to maintain their independence from the others.

Most of our country was built after the invention of the car. Which is why we don't have robust public transportation systems outside of the Northeast. In my home state of Texas, the soil is too soft for subway systems, and big cities boomed around the interstate system established by President Eisenhower. Driving is just how we do things.

We pioneered 20th and 21st Century technology. We built the nuclear bomb and spearheaded nuclear energy, invented the assembly line, put a man on the moon and commercialised space travel, created computers, and more. Most everyday technologies started in the United States, even credit and debit cards. And, yes, we all know and act like it.

We don't have universal healthcare. This is a big criticism from other countries, and that's understandable if you don't step into the United States' shoes. We simply don't have the national revenue, resources, or infrastructure to provide universal healthcare to 340,000,000+ people. That said, we have some of the best healthcare in the world, and the government doesn't interfere with most medical decisions between you and your doctor. To implement universal healthcare, we would have to institute national registration, strict illegal immigration enforcement, and heavily restrict visa applications to ensure its long-term solvency, none of which is politically popular at home or abroad. We made the attempt with the Affordable Care Act, but that has been met with mixed success.

It's easier to get an abortion in the United States than most of Europe. Although this varies by state, it is widely true. Most European countries prohibit abortions between 12 and 14 weeks, require medical approval, mandatory conseling, waiting periods, and more. While several conservative states are cracking down on abortion access post-Dobbs, as a country, it is still unbelievably easy to access abortion-related healthcare on demand.

College football is an national obsession. We get it, the rest of the world doesn't understand. Americans are obsessed with our college football to an insane degree. But we're really no different than literally (or almost literally) every other country in the world who lives and dies by their chosen soccer or rugby teams. Personally, I don't get it, but I guess that's fair.