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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2262 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026

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I was rather surprised to see how outright hostile the sentiment was towards Americans, while attending a reasonably high profile comedy show in Edinburgh tonight. Even directed at the poor sods who responded when the MC/individual comedians asked if there were Americans in the crowd. Apparently "I didn't vote for him" is no defense.

I ran into a very nice gentleman from Washington state while sheltering from the rain under the alcove of his building, next to the venue. I told him that while the show was nice enough, he's better off pretending to be Canadian. He was a tad bit strange, since, as he explained and then demonstrated, he'd stepped out to get soaked in the rain in lieu of a shower. That is probably whimsy and not pathology, but I opted to stay dry.

To be fair, I was sampling from the most vocally leftist/progressive strata of Scottish society. The average Scot seems to be much less deranged, and outright welcoming of the odd American tourist. Anyone else notice such obvious hostility in other countries?

We are costing other countries and their residents a lot of money with the whole Iran and tariff thing. Usually, even of Trump, the critique would be merely aesthetic. In 2026, it is in the pocketbook.

That's nonsense, Europeans sneered at Americans when Trump was a TV personality, sneer at Americans now and will sneer at Americans when only historians would remember who Trump was. That's just the way of things.

The initial comment gave me the impression that they had experienced a qualitative shift towards hostility, which I found plausible because my experiences abroad as an American have generally been fine, so I view the poster's bad experiences as something novel to explain. But maybe I just seem like a cool guy to people, you know?

I've been to Europe many times, and also regularly speak to Europeans and I haven't noticed any change to the hostility. Of course, people have different opinions about things going on in the US (just as Americans have opinions about things going on in Europe) but I didn't notice anything generalizable. That said, I try to associate with people who generally would do such sort of thing (even among the left there are people who know how to behave properly), and if someone random hated me I probably didn't even notice it.

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