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Every day I wake up saying I’m going to try not to think about how much Sweden as an entity overshadows our lives right now, and then it’s right there, like the inescapable abusive relationship that it is. Again, don’t tell me to go home, it is my home. Let me have a say in it.
I see lots of Americans getting that reopening is about callousness toward the lives of working class people, many of whom are migrants and POC, but Swedes won’t accept that it’s the same here. Not only that, but there’s an aggressive insistence that Americans are uniquely stupid
Stupidity gets used because they can position themselves as inherently better, so what’s different aren’t the decisions, it’s the intelligence. A lot of Americans have bought into this, but all it does is feed inequalities because it’s precarious groups who carry the burden.
America isn’t 330 million Florida fuckos named Travis, but when you want to shout us down it’s like, “what would you know, you Americans don’t even go to school!?” It’s a handy way to explain away why Americans seem to be talking about our problems while Europeans ignore theirs
What ends up being ignored is that America isn’t just a bunch of comfortable white people waving flags. That perception erases all the cultures that exist and should be more visible. It erases activism and struggle. I’m not saying the dominant culture is good, when yes, it sucks.
It’s always been there, the attitude that Americans are suspect because it’s harder to read class markers, so we’re treated like a redneck with a big TV who just crashed a country club. But parallels between MAGAs and Swedish liberals with the covid response has illuminated it.
Swedes can’t tell me how it’s different. So they parrot Trumpian things, add some racism and fatphobia, and the underlying message is they are just...better. It feels like being with my abuser who insisted he could call me a cunt and it wasn’t abuse bc it was true.
All dominant cultures are abusive. That’s a thing we have to accept. It’s hard to live in a culture that’s doubling down on the abuse because it doesn’t want to admit that maybe its problems are more than bugs that need a small tweak. Both America and Europe need to face this.
It’s frustrating to see Americans play into it. That travelers from the US are banned from Europe is understandable, but what about those of us who live here? Europe isn’t just a place for people with money to go on vacation. Not all Americans here are rich corporate expats.
Swedes are crying foul and getting exemptions when we’ve done much worse than many US states, including my own. I just feel like, I’m tired. My mental health is fucked from reliving abuse thanks to the “opinion corridor.” My kid might never meet her family. But I’m just...stupid.
