America The Snowflake

Yes people used to think you were cool, but then they realised that actually, you're not. You just like to claim you are.

Disclaimer that I shouldn't have to write: #NotAllAmericans

In the light of Thursday's Oregon school shooting, the debate about gun control has once again surfaced. This time I have noticed a new trend from the pro-ALL-guns camp. I'm calling it "Special Snowflake Syndrome". Maybe this trope existed before, and I just hadn't seen it, maybe it's a reaction to Obama saying  "We are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people," maybe he said that because this trope had already reared it's whiny head. 

Because all over the internet Americans are saying things like

This isn't Australia or Canada. You can't just apply the same kind of fixes to America that you do to other thousands of years-old countries

thanks for that gem Chris Barker

We are different cultures entirely and you cannot compare us.. we have these angry people. They have issues. They will find ways to harm people and getting guns illegally will be just as common. Is regulating drugs working? Is regulating violence working? No. We are a different lot than Europe all together. And Canada HAS had school shootings.

According to this 'logic' American's are an entirely different breed of people, with unresovable violent tendencies. 

Now to outsiders, Americans have always had a bit of a obsession with thinking of themselves as different to everyone else, but ususally they are trying to convince us how much better they are. It seems that aspect has flown out the window, but their need to be seen as special and different is so fundamentally ingrained that they will continue to claim they are somehow set-apart even if it means claiming that they are some sort of Reavers. 

So, I've decided it's time to hit America with some hard truths that the rest of the world has known for decades.

You are not special!!!

If we didn't have you, no one would really care. 

Here: Listen to Tim Minchin say it. 

Really, America. If an inahitable planet was found (and inevitbly you were all "DIBS! we found it, its ours) the leaders of the world would meet, and all secretly whisper to each other

Country 1) "lets convince America to take it's entire population there as our 'leading light' and the 'best example of earth' so that we can get rid of them" 
Country 2) "Great idea, then the rest of us might actually stand a chance of getting things right on this planet, and we can all just watch and laugh at their failures" 


The rest of the world get it.

You are not now, and have never been " a vanguard of freedom in so many, many ways."  Yes people used to think you were cool, but then they realised that actually, you're not. You just like to claim you are. To claim that you are doing things diferently because it's better, or because you want to stand out, to claim that you can not possibly be compared to any other country because you are so unique, that nothing any other country has done would ever possibly work for you. 

And all these claims, are just exhausting us, we honnestly can not belive that you are so attached to the idea of being unique that you will now use it to justify continuing to do nothing about mass shootings. 

And just to be clear, I am not even refering to gun regualtion. You refuse to get socalised health care. You refuse to bring in a mandatory living minnimum wage. You refuse to think "hey, if these Mexican drug cartels that we keep blaming for bringing illegal weapons in can get in so easily, then maybe we need better border control*". You refuse to look at the culture of entitlement that your white male youth are growing up with - cause it's much easier to just blame psych meds, but you refuse to actually bring in any regulations of the pharmecutical industry either.

Every suggestion someone floats gets shot down in flames. "It will never work here" or "It doesn't actually work for you anyway, you still have gun deaths". Well, yes we do, we had the third incident of a public shooting that involved completly random civilians in 19 years on Friday. Yep that's right, the thrid. What are you up to? 294 this year. 45 School shootings alone.

So yeah, you are different, you are special. Because you are the only country in the world with numbers like that, and you are the only country in the world that can look at that number and still claim that "nothing can be done".


* Note this article was written in 2015. Before Trump decided to run, and floated the idea of the Wall, or brought in the #MuslimBan. 
Both of which are frankly terrible policies, and not at all what I was thinking when I suggested that perhaps America needs better border control, because those policies don't actually do anything to make the country safer.