That's not accurate. And there are Americans who are very far to the left. Anybody making blanket statements starting with "all Americans" or "no Americans" is guilty of generalization.
The window of allowable discourse in the US doesn't reach as far left as the center of Canada.
Most Canadians steadfastly believe in health care for all, and they'll defend that. They might quibble a tiny bit about the edge like "Should there be any private health care at all?".
In Europe, in many cases, the farthest right parties aren't even as far right as the Democrats in the US. Standard government policies are complete heresy to discourse in the US.
Try talking about Unions in the US. Even in California, that bastion of the Left on the Leftest of coasts. At which point, you're likely going "Yeah, but who worries about Unions in this day and age?", which is exactly what I mean. The rest of the developed world does. A lot.
It's not a generalization, the window of allowable discourse does not encompass much of the spectrum in the US.
The Obamacare reforms brought us about 3/4 of the way to a German-style multiple-payer universal health care system, and those were widely supported as well (enough to be passed into law!). A majority of Americans consistently support at least some type of health care reform that approaches universal coverage: https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kff-health-tr...
> In Europe, in many cases, the farthest right parties aren't even as far right as the Democrats in the US. Standard government policies are complete heresy to discourse in the US.
The last presidential campaign included a debate between the Democratic candidates where both candidates effusively praised the policies of Denmark, which one candidate identified as “socialist”. The Prime Minister of Denmark replied, “Denmark is a market economy”. https://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-...
> It's not a generalization, the window of allowable discourse does not encompass much of the spectrum in the US.
Bullshit. Half of the country is falling over itself trying to turn the US into a replica of Europe or Canada.
If anything, it’s the opposite—only in the United States is a full, wide spectrum of allowable discourse present. Not only can you find lots of Americans who support virtually any policy commonplace in Europe, but you can find many more who hold views unthinkable or at least unsayable in Europe.
It is accurate. Reread what I've said. "It's a fairly accurate portrayal of the national discourse and the court of public opinion," to paraphrase
When was the last time you found yourself questioning capitalism in the USA? That tends to be the center in Europe, and is unthinkable by the general public and national discourse in media in the USA.
Obviously, I am not defending generalizations and recognize extremist political factions exist in the USA. I am not going to get into a semantic battle about what someone else said when the general idea is there and was just expressed poorly, and the poor semantics are used to somehow disprove the actual idea.
> When was the last time you found yourself questioning capitalism in the USA? That tends to be the center in Europe, and is unthinkable by the general public and national discourse in media in the USA.
You might have missed this since you've been living in Europe, but questioning capitalism is extremely popular in the United States ever since 2016. In fact, many European countries are far more secure in the turn-of-the-21st-century neoliberal consensus than the United States is.
That's not accurate. And there are Americans who are very far to the left. Anybody making blanket statements starting with "all Americans" or "no Americans" is guilty of generalization.