Is it possible that Mexicans included themselves when thinking of "wealthy nations" and made the comparison based on that?
1 has to be right, otherwise "less dangerous" is completely unhinged.
The real danger is publicly provided health care available to all.
Perhaps "religious" here was read to mean "Catholic"?
8% of Mexicans had confidence in Donald Trump, which suggests they are paying attention well enough.
Mexicans seem in general to be pretty sensible and well-informed.
I thought 1 as well - a lot of these answers will depend heavily on what your definition of a wealthy nation is. Even compared to Mexico, the US is very religious - 53% say religion "is very important in my life" in the US, 45% in Mexico.
But if Mexicans are comparing the US with other countries in Latin America, the US doesn't look very religious. Brazil 72%, Honduras 90% etc. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/
Or perhaps this is just bigotry and some of the Mexicans they asked are interpreting it as "how Catholic do you think the US is". The US certainly isn't very Catholic compared to a lot of wealthy countries.
The safety point is weird as well, but two possibilities: we're assuming that it means safety from violent crime but maybe Mexicans are interpreting it differently. The US is very secure from foreign threats compared to some wealthy countries.
Or possibly it's just that Mexicans might know what the US is like from personal or family experience, but they rely on the media for their impressions of further-off countries and this has skewed their beliefs.
I was also struck by how popular AMLO is - 82% favourable and a 65% net favourability rating is amazing! And in fact it's very unusual - https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/global-leader-approval
AMLO is one of only a handful of leaders with any sort of net favourability at all (though I note that the linked poll from October puts him rather lower than the OP poll which was taken in March).
English has "safe" and "secure" which mean subtly different things; the safety of an aeroplane is about whether the wings fall off, the security is about whether someone can put a bomb on board. Spanish, I think, has the same word for both.
Which Americans, there are two flavors?
Many Mexicans have direct or secondhand contact with Americans seeking cheap drinks away from the watchful eyes of their neighbors, or expats living in bigger cities. Americans who go to resorts or other sealed settings don't come into contact with too many Mexicans. I don't know which US TV is popular there, but neither religion nor family are prominent on Friends or say Big Bang Theory.
Friends was about Quakers living in New York.
AMLO
Although Morena is starting to have PRI leaks at the seams, neither AMLO nor anyone in his immediate family has mysterious new riches to explain, unlike most previous leaders.
Interesting that as OECD calculates preventable mortality, the US is below Mexico - but not by much, 177 vs 213. By my average, Western Europe is 99, so we're closer to Mexico (and the Baltics) than to them.
The United States is a rich county sitting on the shoulders of a poor country, wearing a trench coat so it looks like one county.
8: also presumably a lot of Mexicans have been to the US, or have relatives who have?
13. Maybe, sure. Americans say religion is important in their lives but don't go to church, in Mexico religious festivals and parades are visible. Where are there saints' processions in the US, or stations of the cross? Public shrines? The only non-hispanic places I've seen them in the US are italian neighborhoods. Public festivities for Muslim holidays happen also in some places.
Stations of the cross are almost always inside, but every Catholic parish does them.
OK, then I'm confused-- there's something my aunt does outside (not in the US) with a bunch of like-minded people every year, maybe a pilgrimage? I don't think she's especially religious, I should ask her about it.
It's probably a Holy Week procession. Those are rare in the U.S., but I think common in parts of Europe. I have no idea about Mexico. But in the U.S., I agree it is mostly Italian.
My elementary school had an outdoor stations of the cross. It was very nice. The church (also very nice) had that indoors, too.
Recently a Catholic priest on Xitter lamented that priests are following the mores and agreeing to perform weddings outside a church - supposedly that makes it fake under canon law. I wonder then how they can bring the processions inside.
On googling, it is filthy and pagan except in Baltimore and Montana.
Americans say religion is important in their lives but don't go to church,
This is a good point. If I'd bothered to scroll a bit further down I'd have seen that 53% of Americans say religion is important to their lives, but only 36% go to worship at least weekly. 45% of Mexicans say religion is important to their lives and the number who go to worship at least weekly is... 45%.
A lot more Americans pray daily - 55% vs 40% Mexicans.
So there are a lot of Americans - 15% - who are sincerely religious, pray daily, but don't like going to church (and who could blame them).
Where are there saints' processions in the US
I believe that there is generally some sort of public observance of St. Patrick's Day? And Thanksgiving is a religious occasion with parades, though not a saint's day.
19, 20: I think that's overblown. At least I got married in a Catholic wedding that was not in a Catholic church. This was 24 years ago and there was no grief from the church, just a form that needed signed. In fact, they seemed relieved we didn't need the church because they were booked solid.
Granted we weren't outside. We were in a non-denominational campus chapel that looked like a Catholic Church.
22: Yes, I get the impression it's a lot more common than canon law implies (as so much is) and it's only sticklers who have a problem with it. (Probably tradcaths or -adjacents.)
also presumably a lot of Mexicans have been to the US, or have relatives who have?
I truly am not sure whether this is true or not. Certainly within 100 miles of the border. But, say, Mexico City?
Aren't the Holy Week processions the ones with the Klan-like hats? Can't imagine that's too popular in the US, although maybe Trump will fix that too.
That might just be the ones in Spain.
21: Evangelicals who don't go to church were one of Trump's key constituencies in the primary in 2016. (Churchgoers were Cruz backers and somewhat anti-Trump, though they've since changed.)
And Thanksgiving is a religious occasion with parades, though not a saint's day.
I guess this is all accurate, but somehow I have the impression that ajay has never watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
They did a human sacrifice the one year.
28: yes, I wasn't being entirely serious.
24: I honestly don't know either. I was just assuming- they're right next door, lots of business connections across the border, lots of Mexican-Americans with relatives in Mexico, students, holidays.... I'm not saying they've immersed themselves in US culture but would guess a lot have set foot there or know someone who has?
29 to 28. Come, Inspector. It is time for you to keep your appointment with the Mickey Mouse.
(Oh, God! Oh, Jesus Christ!)
I thought someone died in a balloon accident at the parade, but the internet says they were only injured seriously enough to be in a coma for weeks.
Missed most of the holiday shopping season, tragic.
20 The link implies that the Archdiocese of Montana covers a city. There isn't one. There's a Diocese of Helena and another of Great Falls/Billings, and they're both in the Archdiocese of Portland. Missoula parishes are in the Helena diocese, along with Bozeman, Butte and Kalispell.
35: the link also implies that the Catholic church operates under something called "cannon law".
ULTIMA RATIO PAPARUM.
OT, I am occasionally struck by how weird it is that pretty much every advanced democracy seems to have major parties with names that are some combination, in the local language of [liberal, conservative, socialist, democratic, republican, workers', popular, people's, nationalist, etc].
Except for Ireland, where the two main parties are called "The Warriors of the Stone of Destiny" and "The Tribe of the Gaels".
This isn't a dig against Ireland and I think it's something other countries should follow. It's rather like British football teams generally being very boring ("Liverpool", "Dundee United") with occasional outbreaks of pure lunacy ("Heart of Midlothian", "Queen of the South", "Tottenham Hotspur"). Rebrand the Lib Dems as the Knights of King Arthur or something, I'm saying.
Last week, I was invited for lunch with the school district superintendent along with other parents whose input he wanted to hear. Most of the group ended up being immigrant mothers (Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba in this instance, though we also have a few Indian families, an increasing number of Syrian refugee families, and now in the last few weeks some kids who speak only Swahili and so Selah hasn't been able to ask where the one who's her classmate is from yet to satisfy my curiosity) and all of them had as their top concern that American schools as a whole are not safe and it's terrifying to have to send your child, though they all reiterated they see this as a national more than local problem.
With all the bulletproof (bullet-resistant but shatterproof? I don't know my words) glass and multiple stops at the entrance with ID checks and so on, it feels about as safe as it can be and that's not high among my many worries. But yesterday we didn't have school because today is Election Day and having a long weekend is easier (and the schools have to close in part because the level of ID you need to get into an open school is much higher than that required for voting) and a 14-year-old was shot from a car as he rode his bike in the middle of the afternoon. This is NOT normal here and everyone is horrified, but I haven't heard many more details. I know the block across the river where a drive-by hit enough people to be considered a mass shooting and killed a boy Selah's age, 11.
Anyway.
They kicked the voting out of the school here. I had to drive to vote instead of walking across the street. And there's no PTA cookies for sale where I vote now.
I mean, that's not the worst downside to increasing violence in schools, but it's a downside.
37: the interesting bit is that the Warriors of the Stone of Destiny and the Tribe of the Gaels are basically indistinguishable from each other and really quite boring. They could seriously unite as the Property Developers for Corruption Party, and the only reason why people get sorted into one or the other is family connections, while the ultra-emo Ourselves Alone is the one that might literally kidnap you off the street and dispose of your body so that it will never be found.
Meanwhile, the Irish Labour Party is like the Labour Party but Irish, the Greens are the Greens, the Progressive Democrats are basically like any party that might call itself that outside the US, and People Before Profit is just what it sounds like, your friendly local Sanders-y protest group made up of people who used to be Maoists but now have jumble sales for Palestine. The ones with English names are painfully literal and the ones with Irish ones are fantastical, that's the rule.
Of course the British exception is the Conservative party, which sure as hell isn't going to conserve anything except itself and isn't doing a great job on that any more.
My wife and I voted on Friday. It looked like a long line, but it went very quickly and was a pleasant experience. A few months ago I voted against Issue 1 and this time I voted for it. What a flip-flopper!
I sent my ballot in by mail a couple weeks ago. Mayor and both city council seats for my ward. My councilwomen are both very likely to win. I'm less certain about the mayor's race. My candidate won the primary quite handily -- 44% in a five person field, to 28% for the second place finisher -- but that other guy has poured it on.
They could seriously unite as the Property Developers for Corruption Party, and the only reason why people get sorted into one or the other is family connections, while the ultra-emo Ourselves Alone is the one that might literally kidnap you off the street and dispose of your body so that it will never be found.
So two Actual Mafia parties and one Cinema Mafia party.
I'd vote for a Cinema Mafia party
I would vote for, support, lend my ballot to, tick the box for, choose, select, opt for, prefer, select and decide in favour of a Synonym Plethora party.
Japanese parties postwar started out with mostly ideological names, where ideologies are often two words of two characters each and shortened to the first and third followed by Party. So Liberal Democratic Party Jiyuminshuto becomes Jiminto, Social Democratic Party Shakaiminshuto becomes Shaminto, etc. But some more recent parties just start out with two characters followed by Party, which doesn't have definite meanings as loose characters but convey their vibe; the English translation often ends up more definite. So the Soka Gakkai-affiliated Komeito (ko ~= public, mei ~= bright, as roots not words) used to be translated Clean Government Party; and a new far-right party I saw a candidate of speaking on a corner, Sanseito (san ~= participate, sei ~= politics), they have decided to translate as the Do-It-Yourself Party.
49 is fascinating, and also a great example of the problems of translation. I suppose we have a similar habit of abbreviating parties in English and other European languages - the Liberal Democrats become the Lib Dems, and I suppose you could have Nat Pops, Soc Dems and so on. The equivalent of these Japanese party names in English, I suppose, would be newly invented words that carry a certain feeling without actually meaning anything. Cromulent words, in fact.
As further complication, a lot of the ideology names like Liberal, Democratic, Social[ist], etc. were invented back in the Meiji era by combining appropriate-seeming characters so there would be a one-for-one translation with Western languages.
21, 28: A conversation when my wife-to-be and I were first cohabiting, not yet married:
Me: "My parents invited you to join our extended family for our traditional Thanksgiving."
Her: "Wait, Jewish families have traditional Thanksgiving? Huh."
Me: "Sure, we love holidays with weird food and morally ambiguous stories! Turkey, pumpkin pie, touch football, the whole bit. Just like everyone else."
Her: "Not just like, unless you go to church to thank Jesus for the bounty of the new world."
Me: "Wait, Presbyterians go to church on Thanksgiving? Huh."
We went our separate ways that year.
I was digging into the archives from 2014 and stumbled across this from Charley. Feels like from the other side of the world now.
So, we've started watching the Netflix original series Marco Polo. How on earth does it make sense to produce an original series for Netflix? Ok, they have to keep up the subscriber base, but is it really worth the investment in filming on the steppes of Kazakstan? Couldn't they just get more John Wayne?
I mean, nine years of Netflix Original output later, I can't say he's wrong.
It's like a huge expensive experiment to find the rate-limiting step in "production of good television".
Pre-Netflix, no one could really tell why there wasn't more good TV out there. Was it because there were only so many channels, and so many broadcast hours on each? Because there weren't enough good scripts, so all the good ones were already being produced? Not enough money to make all the good scripts?
Netflix essentially removed all those constraints except the "good scripts" one, and, well, now we know.