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Just on my own credentials: I'd like to add that I have more than a passing familiarity with American culture, and not just from TV.
I have a number of American friends. Being a 'liberal' in the suburbian south (Alabama, Georgia, Texas is what I know about) is not always easy, which is why I mentioned the bible belt. I admit that the politicians are easy enough to observe just on my TV, but then again, so do you. :)
You'll have to swallow your tongue quite often around some people in the bible belt, or you'll be considered deluded and/or evil. Even family members. You'll have large influential organizations coming out that women should "submit gracefully to their husbands" (Southern Baptists). I wouldn't feel very comfortable.
One of the weirder/scarier things is that the more I learn about the 'real' US the more I realize that some of the stuff in US movies and TV shows is actually far closer to the truth of life in the US than I initially thought, discounting it as fiction.
Then again, massive individual and regional differences exist in the US as well. Most Dutch probably couldn't tell the north and south apart to start with. :)
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"""You'll have to swallow your tongue quite often around some people in the bible belt, or you'll be considered deluded and/or evil. Even family members. You'll have large influential organizations coming out that women should "submit gracefully to their husbands" (Southern Baptists). I wouldn't feel very comfortable."""
I haven't experienced this myself, but of course I haven't seen all of the south, and maybe Florida is different. It's not the "deep south", and it might be a bit more tolerant, if I can use that word here, because it gets mass tourism.
"""One of the weirder/scarier things is that the more I learn about the 'real' US the more I realize that some of the stuff in US movies and TV shows is actually far closer to the truth of life in the US than I initially thought, discounting it as fiction."""
I don't know about religion and stuff, but I always hated American kids in movies... they're spoiled, rude, dumb, misbehave badly, etc. I discounted that as fiction too, but I am now thinking that is how they actually are. Kids over here can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. (Generally speaking of course... I'm sure there are lots of parents with different ideas.) But that would make for a whole different post...
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Racism in the US can be subtle and invisible if you're white. The same is true for sexism if you're male. I first encountered this when I started a business with my partner, who was black. At first, I felt his feelings of racist slights exaggerated, and that he was oversensitive to it. As time went by and I experienced what he experienced when it happened I came to a different understanding. This was in the so called liberal northeast.
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I believe that most humans have a certain "window" of tolerance. Some people may have somewhat wider windows than others, but generally for everybody tolerance stops somewhere. Also different groups of people have their windows in different places, so they don't match with those of other groups. As a result those different groups call each other intolerant because they tolerate different things.
I think there are very few people in the world who will be tolerant towards others who are less tolerant in the first persons area of tolerance.
There seems to be a general consensus in society which views are acceptable and which aren't. This is what political correctness is all about. Groups and people who adhere to that standard are then entitled to positive attributes of which "tolerance" is one ("patriotism" seems to be another one in the US). People who have different opinions of course are not tolerant. Nobody seems to notice how intolerant that judgement is. Society exerts a lot of pressure to get people to at least pay lip service to the general consensus. This is dangerous as differing views are then hidden from the public discussion. Instead they will grow in the dark and after a while they will harden and turn into hatred.
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Hans,
This series of blogs is really good stuff. It's good to hear honest cross-cultural exchange, especially from people like you with an interesting viewpoint on it. There's good and bad things about the US, and good and bad things about every other country. (That sounds trite, but it's something writers often forget).
Peace
Bill Mill