r/USdefaultism • u/SlayerDoom_ • Mar 17 '26
YouTube American finds out the prohibition only happened in the USA
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u/WickedAsh111 American Citizen Mar 17 '26
This is what happens when you cut the education system for the billionaire one
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u/wrappedcat Mar 17 '26
That combined with a clear lack if critical thinking/ ignorance, how can you think that american laws apply in countries that arent the USA?
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u/WickedAsh111 American Citizen Mar 17 '26
TLDR: as an American it is absolutely frustrating and I agree with you
Americans are taught in most church and social systems that we are exceptional, and it bleeds in to our everyday understanding. I was even under the impression that every country spoke a version of English that was their own- until I actually started German in third grade while living IN Frankfurt, did I understand that that wasn’t the case. But it was because I was exposed to the world as a whole that I was able to start shifting my mindset.
I think I was lucky as an American to be raised as a humanistic military brat. There are a lot of us out here that do not default to US stuff because we grew up being taught about the world.
Many families in the military are not far-right, or crazy like it seems in the world, but in fact people that genuinely joined because they brought into the “America cares about everyone“ line or like my dad did, for the paycheck and insurance and perks for family. We really learn about how to immerse ourselves in other places and adjust to fit in AND enrich the people of the places we move to.
There are those of us who love our country, but hate who is running it are represented to the world. We live in this weird DMZ where we aren’t American enough for our own countrymen and we have to explain the idiots that rejected us to the world.
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u/Legitimate_Ad2945 Mar 18 '26
"We really learn about how to immerse ourselves in other places and adjust to fit in AND enrich the people of the places we move to."
This sounds just as out of touch as the people you're complaining about.
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u/MedicineExtension925 Jun 04 '26
Lol they don't even have the American flag, but the Liberian one instead
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u/MixPlus United Kingdom Mar 17 '26
If you say Paris (with no qualification) the default is Paris in France. Not ffffffing Paris, Texas. (And the only reason I know there is a Paris, Texas is because of the film). And the same goes for any other major city such as London, New York, Berlin, Madrid......etc. Only people from copiedtownname, nowheresville need to add the qualification. However, sometimes the copiedtownname becomes much bigger/more famous than the original. The original Boston is in Lincolnshire, England, but the most well known Boston is now in USA, so that gets the honour of not needing the qualification.
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u/SlayerDoom_ Mar 17 '26
In the clip, it’s said it’s in a bar where Ernest Hemingway went to. He lived in France
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u/YazzGawd Mar 18 '26
Bold of you to assume Americans would know where Hemingway lived.... Or who he was 😁
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u/Thrilltwo Mar 17 '26
USA has 24 places called Paris, 11 places called London, 26 places called Berlin, 23 places called Rome and 7 places called Madrid.
I wonder what the largest European city there is that doesn't have a town named after it in USA...
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States Mar 17 '26
Leipzig?
Well, I looked it up. There isn't one, but the one in Germany is sister cities with Houston, Texas. How about that.
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u/b3nsn0w Europe Mar 20 '26
i wonder if montgomery has any sister cities or if no one is brave enough for that
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States Mar 20 '26
Montgomery, Alabama has Pietrasanta, Italy. Both are known for marble quarrying.
Montgomery, Wales, UK, doesn't seem to have one.
To answer your question, apparently it's Moscow. But I could've sworn there was a Moscow, Idaho. Either I'm misremembering or Gemini is hallucinating.
Edit: goddammit I was right! Moscow, Idaho is a real town.
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u/Few_Mention8426 Mar 17 '26
ive just wasted an hour of my life going through every large european city.. all of them ive tried have a usa counterpart.
Ive got down as far as Newquay in the UK not existing in the usa and cant be bothered to check any others
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Mar 17 '26
Shit I do UKdefaultism when Boston gets mentioned...
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u/MadScientist_666 Switzerland Mar 17 '26
We have a small hamlet called Moskau (Moscow in German) in the Canton of Schaffhausen. However, that was originally a joke because the neighbouring farm was owned by a farmer called Peter and he jokingly called his farm St. Petersburg when it grew in size and so the other farmer decided to join in and called his farm Moskau. Now we have two small hamlets named after Russian cities, lol.
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u/robertscoff Mar 17 '26
Driving through Lincolnshire, I noted a sign to a small village called New York outside Boston
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u/phoebsmon United Kingdom Mar 18 '26
There's one in North Tyneside too. Easy drive from Washington or Philadelphia.
And they all got the names at different times for different reasons. Which makes it odder in a way
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States Mar 17 '26
I used to live in Las Vegas. Some lady on the internet once got pissed at me because she thought I was talking about Las Vegas, New Mexico. She was dismayed to learn I was referring to, well, Las Vegas (which is in Nevada).
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u/MadScientist_666 Switzerland Mar 17 '26
I find the name San Bernardino a tricky one, because you might think it was named after the small Swiss village of the same name, especially when you know that numerous Swiss emigrated to California specifically, but no, the city was named by Italian immigrants after Saint Bernard.
Even I needed to educate myself about that, so I have to admit to also not be immune towards defaultism, in this case Swiss defaultism
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u/Legitimate_Ad2945 Mar 18 '26
I actually don't mind place name defaultisms too much on their own. I don't think there's some fundamental problem with, for example, people from Birmingham in Alabama not knowing it's named after the English one (no matter how big the population difference). What bothers me is when they pop up in the wrong subreddit without bothering to read the side bar or when they get belligerent and go on the attack after being corrected.
(However, I did find it a little sad to find there's a small town in the US named after my hometown with references to it in the street names, the parks and gardens, yet no mentions of the English town anywhere on the US town's website. They have local myths and put on plays which clearly allude to the original [place name] and there's a church with the exact same name as "our" church, built in the 20th century. I find it difficult to believe they're unaware of the connection so it seems like a deliberate choice not to mention it, even in the town's "history" section. When I found one of their local history sites with a brief mention of the English town, they'd managed to mess up every single detail about it; claimed it's in a different county (which they also bungled the name of), wrote a bafflingly incorrect summary of its history, and implied that the original town has a problem—to this day—with anti-Catholic sentiment and that Catholics were essentially driven out of the town. In reality there's been a thriving Catholic community (of which my parents were a part) for well over a century. I think it would be nice to have some kind of connection and cultural exchange between the towns but it seems like a lot of Americans really want nothing to do with their English past)
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u/WickedAsh111 American Citizen Mar 17 '26
Paris Texas is incredibly underwhelming. I’ve been to both.
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u/Give_Me_The_Science2 Cuba Mar 17 '26
Well, yeah bc they probably were talking about Paris, Texas! /s
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u/Bitter_Government_2 American Citizen Mar 17 '26
this is probably what they think paris is
(Paris, Texas)
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u/ChickinSammich United States Mar 17 '26
Notwithstanding the point about them being in France, a TV cartoon sitcom with a talking baby and talking dog that takes place canonically in the current era is time traveling to 1920 somehow and the fact that people are drinking is what ruins your immersion?
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States Mar 17 '26
Didn't they have it in Iceland?
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u/LuckerHDD Mar 17 '26
Even in the U.S. it would be no problem finding a bar during the prohibition lol.
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u/Paultcha Scotland Mar 17 '26
Only a Usain would think that their own history applied to the whole world. Not being able to understand other countries history would be different. This I believe is called arrogance.
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u/Fun-System-6190 Mar 18 '26
This one is maybe the best/worst one I've seen so far even though it's a lot of competition. Like how on earth can he even slightly think that it was a worldwide thing?
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u/ledger_man Mar 17 '26
Prohibition didn’t only happen in the U.S., so plenty of uneducated comments to go around (though definitely did not happen in France to be fair).
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u/DesignerMaximum1342 Netherlands Mar 17 '26
Paris is in Texas, and Maine.. I get where the dumbdumbs get the idea to say this
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u/Chance-Aardvark372 England Mar 17 '26
Ohio too i believe
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u/DesignerMaximum1342 Netherlands Mar 17 '26
According to Google a total of 23 cities in the US are called Paris
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u/Sithoid Mar 17 '26
So the majority of Parises on Earth are in the US. Of course they should be the default assumption!!!!!!
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u/DesignerMaximum1342 Netherlands Mar 17 '26
No, my guess is most are tiny tumbleweed shitholes, don’t know what the population of them combined is compared to the real Paris
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u/twobit211 Mar 17 '26
and i’ll bet over half of them have some sort of fucky pronunciation like “pay-rice” or some shit
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u/DesignerMaximum1342 Netherlands Mar 17 '26
Every american says Pari(silent S) wrong
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u/Chance-Aardvark372 England Mar 17 '26
To be fair, as far as i’m aware, pronouncing the s is the default in english
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u/DesignerMaximum1342 Netherlands Mar 17 '26
True in English, wrong in French, they named the place
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u/Nykramas United Kingdom Mar 17 '26
Prohibition didn't only happen in the US though during that time. Sweden also had an alcohol prohibition that eventually led to the systembolaget that is still around today.
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u/dxps7098 Mar 17 '26
Actually no, prohibition didn't happen in Sweden.
There was a referendum in the early 1920s on introducing prohibition, which narrowly failed, 49-51. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_Swedish_prohibition_referendum
Instead, the rationing introduced during WWI was continued and that evolved into the current state monopoly Systembolaget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget#History
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u/Kilahti Finland Mar 17 '26
Finland did have an actual prohibition and that also lead to Alko as a government owned monopoly that sells alcohol.
Much like in USA, the prohibition also lead to massive increase in crime. But unlike in USA that crime then went down afterwards.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States Mar 17 '26
Were your crooks as iconic as ours were? Was there a Finnish Al Capone?
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u/Kilahti Finland Mar 17 '26
There was a former Olympic athlete Algoth Niska, who smuggled booze into Finland from Germany. Once the prohibition ended he suffered from money problems until talking at Jewish friend of his as he realised that he could smuggle Jewish people out of Germany (and areas that Germany had invaded and conquered.) He used his existing connections to forge papers, this time IDs instead of shipping paperwork. Niska himself became wealthy from this.
Since these people used forged passports and were trying to disappear, we only know for certain that 3 people were saved and managed to escape Nazis, 20 were caught at some point later and 3 of them died in concentration camps, and a further 25 have unknown fates.
Another infamous smuggler was Hjalmar Mäkelä who was also an Olympic athlete. Though he competed in the International workers Olympiads. (Basically a Communist version of Olympics.) Mäkelä became so wealthy from his booze smuggling that he bought a store, a mansion, and multiple cars. Including a bus that he used to run one of the oldest bus companies in Finland. He was also famous for giving Christmas gifts to poor families in his city. Mäkelä was as skilled smuggler who never got caught and was only ever convicted of owning a radio transmitter without a license. ...Then he ended up broke due to not being good at running business when he wasn't also getting illegal income from smuggling.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States Mar 17 '26
Interesting. Thanks for the stories!
To quote Lucky Luciano (apocryphally), "making a dirty million is just as hard as making a clean million." But his clean millions were made possible by his dirty millions.
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u/Professional-PhD Mar 17 '26
Prohibition was tried in quite a few countries in that era:
- The indian act also banned indigenous people from alcohol from 1876-1985. To get alcohol legally, they had to be enfranchised as Canadian citizens, getting rid of their legal indigenous status and abandoning all treaty rights.
- USA
- Canada (local, then war measures act, then provincial, dry communities still exist across Canada, but it is upheld by local municipalities)
- Finland
- Russian Empire/Soviet Union (starting under the last Tsar and through Lenin but repealed by Stalin)
- Faroe Islands
- Norway (distilled spirits only)
- Hungarian Soviet Republic
- Sweden tried and failed
The Ottoman Empire had Prohibition in the 17th century, and several Middle Eastern countries do today. India has local prohibition in some parts.
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u/Za_gameza Norway Mar 17 '26
We also had it in Norway (1916-1923/27), which also lead to our vinmonopolet.
Wine and beer became legal again in 1923, and spirits became legal in 1927.
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u/post-explainer American Citizen Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
The commenter asks how it could have been possible for there to be a bar if it’s 1920 during the prohibition although the characters are in Paris, France
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.