@RaD 580098 wrote:
I’ve heard a lot of insults regarding Americans, but I have NEVER heard someone call our president a muppet :laugh_at:.
to be fair Muppets as portrayed on modern American TV (especially Sesame Street) are by and large intelligent; well behaved, tolerant and good natured and shown in a context of positive multiculturalism and consenus; thus completely unlike American politicians and business leaders.
The British term is derived from the UK produced Muppet Show from the 1970s which was a comibination of vaudeville and “end of the pier” British variety show comedy.
TBH the biggest problem I find with American culture is the stubbornness and hatred of consensus. North Europeans (many Americans are descended from them) are equally stubborn but there is a point at which they realise they must work together for the common good (putting aside individual short term commercial/political gains) or whatever they are designing will not work efficiently (if at all) or there could even be danger to everyone.
Often this means some kind of government assisted regulator oversees the consensus processs. Americans whinge about this as “socialism” or “inteferiing with the free market” and end up creating something that works in the short term but causes bigger problems down the line as well as using their people or end customers as unpaid guinea pigs for all sorts of things, or simply ignoring established technical standards/regulations if they think there is no one to enforce them. I see this loads in tech and its the reason there are so many big security and resilience problems the world over.
