An American visiting family across the country would be like if you went to visit relatives in Latvia or something (in terms of distance).
I think you’re overplaying the distance part a little bit. America was “discovered” in the Age of Exploration right on time for distance to be an increasingly less important factor. Hence why America could sustain a federal state made up of an almost entire homogeneously WASP population, and Europe could not (and the idea of a “federal Europe” is still a pipe dream at this point). There’s more of a cultural divide by every metric between two cities 100 km away on either side of a linguistic border in Europe than there is between Boston and Los Angeles.
while a Boston accent to a Southern drawl is more like Quebecois French to European French
You’re over-exagerating. Heavily accented Texans have little to no trouble being understood by a Bostonner, but a heavily accented older Québécois is nigh impossible to understand for the unattuned French ear. It’s like the Hot Fuzz “sea mine” scene.
I appreciate that the US obviously doesn’t have a fully homogeneous culture (especially in cities with immigrant backgrounds), but it’s nothing Europe where Brits can tell which village someone comes from just from their accent. If I were to drive to Riga (which is actually barely as long of a drive as Boston to New Orleans) I would have to go through five sovereign states, each with their own language and variety of minority languages, their own idiosyncratic laws and justice systems (to the point that unlike the US the EU never make laws, it makes directives for EU states to implement individually), a completely different set of TV shows and radio shows and literature canon and more local food specialties than would be possible to keep track of. I’m sorry but going from Boston to New Orleans is nowhere near as much of a cultural shock. The only thing comparable to going from Belgium to Latvia is going from the US to Latvia.
Anyway it’s not a competition. Taking pride in our ancestors’ achievements is a dangerous road to go down, and anyway if we look at modern achievements then the entire developed world has unfortunately coalesced towards a very globalized (often american-centric) set of values and esthetic sensibilities. You can take a random new condo built in Phoenix, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and Bratislava and not be able to tell which is from where, and the people living in them are probably all watching an American TV show anyway.
I think you’re overplaying the distance part a little bit. America was “discovered” in the Age of Exploration right on time for distance to be an increasingly less important factor. Hence why America could sustain a federal state made up of an almost entire homogeneously WASP population, and Europe could not (and the idea of a “federal Europe” is still a pipe dream at this point). There’s more of a cultural divide by every metric between two cities 100 km away on either side of a linguistic border in Europe than there is between Boston and Los Angeles.
You’re over-exagerating. Heavily accented Texans have little to no trouble being understood by a Bostonner, but a heavily accented older Québécois is nigh impossible to understand for the unattuned French ear. It’s like the Hot Fuzz “sea mine” scene.
I appreciate that the US obviously doesn’t have a fully homogeneous culture (especially in cities with immigrant backgrounds), but it’s nothing Europe where Brits can tell which village someone comes from just from their accent. If I were to drive to Riga (which is actually barely as long of a drive as Boston to New Orleans) I would have to go through five sovereign states, each with their own language and variety of minority languages, their own idiosyncratic laws and justice systems (to the point that unlike the US the EU never make laws, it makes directives for EU states to implement individually), a completely different set of TV shows and radio shows and literature canon and more local food specialties than would be possible to keep track of. I’m sorry but going from Boston to New Orleans is nowhere near as much of a cultural shock. The only thing comparable to going from Belgium to Latvia is going from the US to Latvia.
Anyway it’s not a competition. Taking pride in our ancestors’ achievements is a dangerous road to go down, and anyway if we look at modern achievements then the entire developed world has unfortunately coalesced towards a very globalized (often american-centric) set of values and esthetic sensibilities. You can take a random new condo built in Phoenix, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and Bratislava and not be able to tell which is from where, and the people living in them are probably all watching an American TV show anyway.