@quinn If more Europeans understood that in the US every single police officer is armed to a military standard, there is no place in the US you can go where you will not encounter police multiple times a day, US police are encouraged to hide and lie as part of daily operations, and the US has the worlds highest prison population, like just that set of facts kind of explains a lot?

@quinn I think it's not necessarily out of grasp for a lot of Europeans, it's just that they get fed a lot of US propaganda about the US too. But I think plenty of Europeans have a basic grasp of the circumstances of the average working person in the Russian Federation, and that's not totally dissimilar? Highly propagandized, living under a deeply militarized security state, with a shockingly low standard of living because of frayed social systems and a gut-shot civil society, leading to many people withdrawing from politics and widespread deaths of despair.

Europeans would get much closer to understanding the US if they think in those terms basically.