Visiting USA

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Someone misunderstood me the other day, I was saying not very nice things about USA, and I was sort of accused of being a snob about USA like that posh woman on a film called Tea with Mussolini but l don’t think I am really like her I just refuse to visit USA until they’ve liberated themselves. Do you think I should visit anyway with a friend who’s disabled and wants to promote his poetry books or should we wait until they’ve liberated themselves from the war profiteers

Sorry I think I might have posted this in the wrong section

Last edited by Cornflake on 04 Jul 2025, 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.: Moved to Random Discussion

Yeah it seems these days we can't have opinions or preferences without being called snobs and supremacists, etc.

I didn't hear what precisely you said, but I wouldn't personally recommend people visit the US right now, at least until the questions surrounding how to do so legally are properly addressed. I also don't think that most reasonable Americans would disagree with my assessment that right now it's just not particularly safe to visit the US.

That's not to say that it couldn't be OK, but it's like visiting places like China or Iran where there's a bunch of stuff that you can do that would be OK elsewhere that can get you in trouble or kicked out of the country that probably aren't worth the related headaches.

A lot of people here in Canada aren't happy with the USA, either right now, in case you haven't noticed. Mainly because of Orange Raving Lunatic.

But Canadians are more like Americans than anywhere else in the world, and I'm sorry to say that the most Canadian thing I probably do is not wear shoes indoors. Apparently walking around your own house or someone else's in just socks is incredibly strange to Americans. And we keep our shoes on when we go into a public buildings.

That varies a lot. Much of the US hasn't had the sanitation issues that led to blanket bans on that like in other places.

You couldn't pay me to visit the US right now, when every visit includes the risk of being sent to a death camp in El Salvador.

Couldn’t pay me to go there either, that’s why my friend said I’ve always been snob about USA, when in fact what it really was a book called the Photographic History of the 20th century which put me off USA. But you know I’m bit more mature nowadays and I realise that our British empire was just as bad as our cousins over in USA they used to call them the Bigwigs, I’m not sure if Trump is one their descendants

I think referring to a desire for self-preservation as snobbery is a big giveaway the person's opinions aren't worth engaging with.

The person you're describing in your OP is an idiot.

He’s not an idiot except when he’s drunk, I don’t agree with his politics, but you know just agree to disagree.

Maybe not overall, but at least in this limited context.

It's really hard to see conflating a desire for self-preservation with snobbery as anything but idiocy. How else would someone develop such a broad and imprecise definition of snobbery?

Well I said to him why doesn’t his get his sister to take over in his wheelchair. New York would be too noisy for me too, I should have told him that, just don’t like going on about my problems with noise

Oh is see yes Broad diffenition of snobbery, thats just seems a very English thing, I suppose it’s a sort of put down

Ah, that could be a factor. I tend to think of snob as having a fairly narrow definition, mostly related to elitism.

Well I've never heard of "snob" having that kind of definition in the UK, and I've spent long enough there. My guess is that he just got the wrong word. There's a lot of it about.

I suppose his real meaning was simply that he likes the USA more than you do and he wanted to get back at you for for annoying him. Not really a matter for useful debate, and I don't think it's wise to hang onto a drunken man's words too seriously. He was just being rude I expect. The USA is so huge and varied that it's very hard to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions about what it would be like to visit one part of it as a tourist for a limited time.

I've been spending 2/3 of my life in the USA for several years now, in Arkansas, and I've not felt particularly threatened, Trump or no Trump. Life seems to go on much the same as it ever did, and my biggest personal concern is what might happen to prices. But compared to the UK, so far so good.

If you do go, I wouldn't particularly expect the plane to arrive at the scheduled time. They very often screw that up these days, and we're talking a few hours not a few minutes. No particular reason why you'd get sent back at immigration though, as long as you've got a visa waiver or something. True, there's a sense of uncertainty in the air because Trump is changing things faster than the speed of thought, but I don't think he wants to interfere with the tourist trade.

Any kind of travelling to a far-away country comes with risks.

If you're waiting for the USA to "liberate itself," you're gonna be waiting a long time, you may never visit.

I think it's weird to associate people with the governments they live under, most of us don't agree with our government. I live in the American South where the media likes to portray it as ultra conservative and backwards, those folks are actually the minority, it's just the way voting districts are set up. It's skewed so conversative politicians win.

The USA is a massive country and people and culture vary a lot depending on where you go. I think you'd find that people are very welcoming.

There's not much a danger visiting, especially if you're coming from the UK or Europe. If you're coming to support a friend whose a creative you're likely to visit more open minded cities as well.