I understand what you're saying, but I maintain it is worse in the US.
My aviation mechanic and good friend likes to point out that, "No matter how you define intelligence, half the people are below average."
I do want to thank you for something you mentioned in your post. You wrote, "Since I got to choose my coworkers for many years the vast majority of my job interaction was people on the other side of that bell curve." I never thought about my own bubble before reading that, but I, too, have not spent very much of my work life around folks who were on the left side of the curve. Further, even as a child, with my father being an academic and my mother being a nurse, our family interactions with others rarely involved spending any time with anyone "on the left side of the curve."
Yet, I maintain that people in the U.S. are worse than people in other countries. And, at least since Ronnie Reagan, they have outsized representation in our government (Aside: The senators in the majority represent some 15 million *fewer* Americans than do those in the minority). Which is a real tragedy because our government in many ways is the face we present to the rest of the world.
So, what's my evidence that it's better elsewhere other than personal experience?
Here's some.
And Trump's disapproval rating brings down the entire nation's reputation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/elections/world-opinion-of-the-us-and-trump-is-in-a-tailspin-as-the-pandemic-persists-a-pew-poll-finds.html
I do want to thank you for something you mentioned in your post. You wrote, "Since I got to choose my coworkers for many years the vast majority of my job interaction was people on the other side of that bell curve." I never thought about my own bubble before reading that, but I, too, have not spent very much of my work life around folks who were on the left side of the curve. Further, even as a child, with my father being an academic and my mother being a nurse, our family interactions with others rarely involved spending any time with anyone "on the left side of the curve."
Yet, I maintain that people in the U.S. are worse than people in other countries. And, at least since Ronnie Reagan, they have outsized representation in our government (Aside: The senators in the majority represent some 15 million *fewer* Americans than do those in the minority). Which is a real tragedy because our government in many ways is the face we present to the rest of the world.
So, what's my evidence that it's better elsewhere other than personal experience?
Here's some.
And Trump's disapproval rating brings down the entire nation's reputation.
Before the Trump era, public opinion of the U.S. remained steadily north of 50 percent in most countries — with the exception of the early 2000s, when President George W. Bush waged an unpopular war in Iraq. In the new survey, the U.S.’s median approval rating among the 13 countries was 34 percent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/elections/world-opinion-of-the-us-and-trump-is-in-a-tailspin-as-the-pandemic-persists-a-pew-poll-finds.html