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The optimism thing gets me every time.

Gross generalisation time: I've met very few Americans I disliked as individuals, but an awful lot that in groups become intolerable. A lot of it seems to be that the barrier for nonsensical optimism creeps lower with each extra member added to the group until absolute irrationality reigns supreme. If you try to burst this bubble you are screwed, and the only thing to do is walk away and hope to be far enough away that when it blows up you're not in the blast radius.

The thing is one time out of ten they're right and the cynics among us are wrong, and you have to love them for that. As Churchill is often quoted as saying you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, once they've tried every other possibility.




Everybody comes to America to make their dreams come true. They cling to that optimism to hold on to their silly dreams when the odds are against them. Naturally, the culture reflects this. We're delusional. I notice a similar optimism on Hacker News. Everyone's going for a piece of the gold rush.




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