GenZedong

I mean you sort of started it with a mildly aggressive question

In addition to the other responses, we don't have much nuance in our political conversations. Partially because we hear the same thing repeatedly but also because other views don't break into our bubble that often. It ends up framing everything much more like a script to be followed. If you're challenging the "left-wing" candidate, you must be doing so from the stance of someone who supports the right-wing candidate. That's the script. And very often, those roles come with baggage (eg, 'trump supporter', 'misogynist', etc.). So because you have put yourself in one of those roles/boxes, the script in their mind is being followed, and you've taken on that baggage.

You can see this in our media discussions as well. Who likes what movies, franchises, why, etc. Many people are unaware that they are acting this prescriptively, so we often talk past each other and rarely act in as good of faith as we think we are engaging in. Neo-liberalism is built on flexible word choices, slogans, and terms without meaning. This results in a lot of reverse terminology, empty words, and a clinging of identity and labels around more solid terms. The latter has the effect of simplifying people and positions into boxes that result in script-like behavior due to regurgitating known responses and interactions with people in that label over there. The implication that you might not fit that label demands an immediate and intense examination of the subject matter in a few seconds or risk not appearing smart/moral/etc. So not only is that a threat to their image, but it's a lot of internal pressure in a short time—hince the response you got from them was very reflexive and combative.

American Liberals are above all else defined by a smugness that is backed by a total and complete naiveness of the word without the inability to understand that Socialists/Communists still exist in the world outside of the US and China. American Liberals believe their is only one opposition to their views, the uneducated unwashed masses who is backward in character and without any virtue.

American Liberalism is largely a believe of credentialism that simultaneously somehow proves their moral virtue.

Speaking as someone from the US my whole life who became communist only in recent years, my general sense is people like me are raised to think that: 1) the world revolves around the US and everything else is secondary to it (not true). 2) the US is a people's democracy (it isn't). 3) democrats are the more moderate/progressive party (they aren't, if they ever were truly - maybe going back to the FDR coalition, they were a bit).

But if you believe all 3 of these, and you strongly believe that Trump is a threat to a people's democracy, then you might have a strong reaction to the idea of not supporting the alternative. To be clear, I'm not saying their behavior is reasonable at all. But I can kind of see how they arrive at it, with headspaces I've been in at times in the past, and the propaganda people tend to believe in the US.

Tbh, they sound like they are deep in western chauvinism, coming to your Eastern European country and yelling at you about their elections. As if you are supposed to be involved in it too somehow (this is where point 1 comes in). You did nothing wrong. Blue maga, aka: "vote blue no matter who", the special brand of USian liberal who has adopted a stance of voting for a half-eaten ham sandwich over voting for Donald Trump, is not well-grounded in reality. In effect, I think whether they realize it consciously or not as what it is in substance, they are panicked about the neoliberal order crumbling and being replaced with naked fascism (e.g. no decorum to cover it up), but they lack the framework with which to see the neoliberal order as already being fascistic, so to them this is the absolute worst case scenario for their country and life. Meanwhile, people who see beneath the curtain are going like, "Is it really the worst thing if liberals start to see the US for what it is, rather than continuing to believe in the pomp and ceremony?" Migrant kids in cages went from being an issue liberals cared about under Trump to being a nothing under Biden.

People in this state of mind are effectively duped by the liberal decorum and really believe it's better for that reason.

In the US there are no real politics. Average people have near zero power to affect any change in their country. So the concept of engaging in politics has shifted to solely a cultural identity.

Now even though they cannot effect their material conditions positively in this system, the people still driven to adopt these cultural identities still get something that matters to them out of their participation. One group gets to punish those they hate/satisfy their anger and hatred of libs (this is the republicans the more opening fascist party). The other group - the liberals - who tend to be more affluent, college educated, etc. vote for the democratic party to feel morally superior/assuage guilt for being affluent/college educated in the most unequal nation on earth.

Interrogating an American liberal on their positions regarding politics is to them an assualt on the foundation of their superior moral character - which is soley defined by "voting blue no matter who." To call into question the lesser evil of the democratic party is to say that they are not a good person.

In short, the US is not okay. We are never sending our best. Death to America of course

The contradictions are sharp enough now that simply acknowledging the terrible things the dems do/have done the past 4 years can provoke a full-blown chimp out. Trump Would Do Worse makes up the vast amount majority of everything I hear from them whenever they pester those like us who can no longer stomach the rat race. I think the reason they're so aggro this cycle is because deep down they know that they don't really have a leg to stand on beyond bluanon crap. They can't accept that the fact that you simply can't claim to be anti-cop and anti-genocide and then not only vote for them, not only stump for them, but also piss and moan when we refuse to. It stresses them out to address that contradiction and call it out for what it is, self-interested fascist apologia. This is what happens when your only perception of what fascism is comes from Spielberg movies and other holocaust oppression porn.

If I were you I would probably either ignore them or corner them if you're already stuck in a conversation and ask point blank if non-American lives are worth sacrificing to them to get what they want: Trump crying on election day so they can gloat and over-post about it for the next 4 years and go back to being blind, deaf, and dumb to geopolitics (whilst pissing and moaning ineffectually about SCOTUS and congress every day).

Settler-colonies I would say fundamentally operate on a completely different Overton window from normal countries. I'd say you can blame this exchange student's thin skin on her being close to institutional power; you can blame the "seeing anyone who doesn't support her form of fascism for being the other type of fascist in her country" on her spending most of her life completely isolated from actually having to face the contradictions of settler society; and you can blame the general tribalism of national politics in the USA at least partially on settlers needing to absolve themselves of guilt by demonizing the "other side" that supports 95% of the same things.

I've started to informally distinguish between three types of US citizen abroad: my own type are "Americans", we are polar opposites to "Seppos", and between us Americans and those Seppos is an unstable middle ground that I call "Usonians".

From my own typology, I might label the exchange student you met as a "Seppo" just from this description — her refusing to speak to you means that she is likely wholly disinterested in, and will in all likelihood actively try to avoid through kicking and screaming if necessary, coming to terms with the contradictions surrounding your country's relationship to the USA, and what this relationship says about the USA itself. If she intends on returning to the USA after she is done with her studies, she must actively not build roots in the local community in which she now resides, and making her confront her own relationship to imperialism and settler-colonialism quite simply interferes with this.

The outburst you witnessed is in other words what I consider a "repair strategy" through which the settler-colony prevents "settler hemorrhage".

However, I could always be mistaken and she might really be typologically more like a Usonian — that despite that outburst you witnessed, she could actually one day become informed and genuinely empathetic, in which case she could become an American. But I have an image of what the typical US-born exchange student is like, and with the class background I'm imagining, I wouldn't bet on winning her over to our side.

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.

The slightest inconvenience to liberals, including access to treats or vacations, makes them thirsty for blood. Well, thirstier because liberals tend to love bloodshed when it's presented for their entertainment from embedded footage of war crimes on screens.

Not an American, but have spent a lot of time there. They have two right wing liberal parties, and a political system that actively resists any changes to that setup. As a result, they think that those are the two political extremes, and everything between them is centrist. Anyone outside of that is an extremist and not worthy of consideration. So when you criticise their party of choice, you obviously must be on the "other" side of the political spectrum, which to them is the other US political party.

They just don't know any better, it's outside of their realm of experience.

Liberals are insecure. They reflexively start name-dropping news agencies, universities, dudes with British accents, or whatever they can so you affirm their beliefs and not a single one outside of their bubble. Also someone studying abroad typically has means so they were likely coddled their entire life (I am guessing here).

I ran into one recently that kept name dropping associated press and Reuters with regards to denouncing Palestinian resistance and their so called "violence" essentially justifying the genocide and saying such and such paper stated Iran tricked the resistance into Oct 7th. Dumb shit like that.

The worse revenge you can do to a liberal is ignore them. They hate that the same smugness they treat you with.

Ya, that's just how Americans are, this coming from an American. All the looting of other nations goes to your head. She has probably never been asked that hard of a question before. To be honest she is probably just super alienated from reality.

American politics are purely based on identity that this point. To the liberal mind, there are only two teams, and you're on the other team unless you give your undying loyalty to your team.

I have so many coworkers who think me criticizing the sitting president or his heir to throne makes me a republican. Any possible grievance I have will be countered with "but trump will be worse?! Check mate."

Every single person I know who spent a semester abroad is even more insufferable. They will talk about this trip to europe the rest of their life, inserting it into every conversation to give them a false sense of being well traveled.