They always assume you’re American and then you see their brain short circuiting when they find out you’re not. It’s as if other countries only exist as this abstract notion and only America is real. They tend to think of us as this monolithic abstraction as everyone in a Muslim country, for example, shares some inherent trait instead of a place with its own contradictions and its own complexities that cannot be reduced to their dumb generalities.
They always assume you’re American and then you see their brain short circuiting when they find out you’re not. It’s as if other countries only exist as this abstract notion and only America is real. They tend to think of us as this monolithic abstraction as everyone in a Muslim country, for example, shares some inherent trait instead of a place with its own contradictions and its own complexities that cannot be reduced to their dumb generalities.