It’s not shame so much as deep embarrassment for the current state of our country. We look like fucking morons on the world stage. Thankfully we will move on from this stage in our history, but the stain may remain for decades to come.

China has been China-ing for a while, we get it. America’s actions are relatively fresh, and a majority of us DID choose him. While I’ll immediately reassure people that I didn’t vote for him, the fact that I have to separate myself from what’s going on comes from a sense of shame over that.

That said, if I met a Russian I wouldn’t necessarily hold the invasion of Ukraine against them… But I might have to ask if they really support that shit.

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You don’t have to be at fault to be ashamed.

I feel that way but because I’m human.

We are not good people.

I don’t know about others but I imagine for a lot its just guilt by association. I’ve definitely been feeling it for a while.

I also think a lot of people feel bad about their tax money going into the pockets of so many evil people for so many evil purposes. One of the reasons I personally stopped paying taxes. I wish my fellow Americans would join me on that end, but it isnt easy.

Part of the social contract in America (at least… this is what I believed growing up here) is that we all kinda share in this thing we all have going. Like, let’s say we get into a war. The government can (and does) ask citizens to join the military and fight and the reason that works is because we all kinda implicitly signed off on it. Yeah, sure, you had nothing to do with the country getting into a war. But because you participated in government, in the system, because we run this thing (nominally) by the standard of democracy and consent of the governed, everyone owns at least a small part of the responsibility for the country’s actions. In the case of a war, that might look like joining the military and “doing your part”. More commonly it looks like paying your taxes and still “respecting” the government, even if it’s not the one you voted for.

Now, like I said, that’s more than anything what I felt when I was a kid. Speaking personally, I’m in a very different headspace now as it relates to governance. I also feel like generally speaking all that’s shifting, though I’ve very little to back that up save… gestures at the past couple of decades of American politics.

More to your question however, I think that the kind of social contract I laid out above kinda explains some of what you’ve asked. Even if you want to say it’s purely performative, that’s fine. But the fact that Americans are “asked” about how they should be governed implicitly puts the idea in our heads that we’re responsible for what our country is doing. It’s not just “some dottering old idiot at the top of the org chart decided this thing”, it’s we. America is doing this thing. Even if the truth really is that some dottering old fool made a decision out of personal ambition or greed. We get it drilled into our heads from a very young age that this is our government. And no matter how much you try to distance yourself from that… it still irks you, somewhere in the back of your head.

Maybe, at some point before I was born, that was expressed as a point of pride. I could see some folks being proud of what America was or what it stood for, once upon a time. Now though? I find it hard to believe that that mindset could find any other expression but shame. And weirdly, I believe that’s true regardless of what your politics are. Different reasons are at play there depending on what your politics are, of course. But lately it feels like everyone’s got some grievance against the government. Some reason to feel ashamed about what “our” government, what “we” are doing. Whatever that thing is for you, you don’t want it being done in your name. But the central trick of American “democracy” is that you don’t get to just walk away. Whatever is being done is being done “in your name” whether you want it or not. And it’s been that way since before you were born.

A tangentially related correlate here is that I feel like a lot of Americans don’t feel represented by their government anymore. I certainly don’t feel that way, and I haven’t since Obama was president. That was roughly back when I was young enough to uncritically believe some of the views I’ve expressed here. Things have changed a little bit. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because part of what I think is going on is that the social contract is breaking down along the lines of nobody feeling like the government they have is actually representing their interests. Maybe, if this goes on for long enough, the social contract will change into something different entirely. Maybe this “shame” we all seem to feel will turn American society into something different than what it currently is, if it’s given the time to do so. But, I can’t really read the tea leaves on that one. All I know is things just can’t keep going the way their going. Something’s gonna break eventually.

I haven’t felt very patriotic or proud of my country in over 25 years, since I began to slowly understand politics and how things worked within my country. I feel that after everything I’ve read, everything I’ve heard about, everything I verified myself by researching and everything everyone has gone through in it with the bads. You can say my control stick has been snapped off and I’m permanently unpatriotic and ashamed to represent my country, knowing the damage that has been done internally as a country and externally everywhere else in the world.

I know it’s not my fault, I just do what I can, I pay my taxes knowing it’s being pissed away, I work jobs I didn’t like doing to feel like I’m contributing despite it not being ultimately worth it because I am helping sustain the motion of this unworthy country. I have voted Sanders, Sanders, Harris in my voting record. And still, the assholes won in the end. But then I feel like, that shit doesn’t matter because our track record as a country has shown that the system is in favor of said assholes if they’re cunning enough to take advantage of them and that’s what we’ve witnessed many times.

All the while knowing that half of the population in this country, is dead set in taking the rest of us down with them in every negative decision made. While still trying to tell us it is our fault.

Because it collectively is our fault.

Speaking only for myself: because the American government has, for 250 years, claimed to act on behalf of the American people. When it was liberating concentration camps and sending people to the moon, that was something to be proud of.* When it was upholding slavery and winking at Jim Crow laws, it wasn’t.

It’s a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and so he purports to speak and act on my behalf. That’s deeply embarrassing and shameful, even if I couldn’t have done anything differently to prevent it.

* (Yes, I know that even those “good” examples are complicated. I’m just forming an example here)

I’m just embarrassed as fuck

I dont identify with my country. Im just a resource so they can collect taxes. I think their decisions are stupid and childish but its like watching babies trying to build a house.

Best you can do is to focus on your own life.

Well this last election really broke me from thinking of myself as an American. I just happen to live here.

Because the truth is our democracy is managed by oligarch propaganda. And our votes mean very little outside of local elections.

A vote for Trump and a vote for Harris were both going to continue the harms of the MIC and the fossil fuel industry. Yes, Trump is an accelerant. And I voted not to add gasoline.

But the fire was going to burn one way or the other.

Anyway, I think folks that feel ashamed still believe that their voice matters. Which is by design of the political and business class.

I believe the shame stems from the moral injury we all suffer when we peacefully stand by in a democracy and let bad people control the government and inflict serious harm on innocents

So in some respect it is in fact all of our faults because we do in fact sit by and watch people die so we can respect the democratic process.

When the rest of the world hates you for shit a minority of your country did, but succumb to generalized thinking and blame all Americans (looking at you, Europe), a guilt complex can be internalized.