I've noticed that a lot of people who either moved to America after living abroad, or has never lived here, find it weird that Americans politicize everything. Friends in Lithuania, friends from Cuba and elsewhere have all said this to at different times.

My perspective as someone born and raised in America is that...well yeah just about everything IS political in one respect or another. So it seems weird to me to not see the connection between politics and...everything.

As I type this, though, I think a possible answer could be how scewed and screwed our political lens is here. Bernie is labeled "far-left crazy commie" for his advocation of policies that are considered "center" in most political spectrums abroad. His "cookiest" ideas are common sense elsewhere. So as a country we're in a pretty deep deficit with how politics effects our lives, and thusly even bare minimums are politicized.

Thoughts?

Bernie’s policies aren’t “center” in most of the world but other than that yeah, it feels like politics encompass everything here

The answer is what you said at the end

Maybe I should change that to European countries? I'm basing that off anecdotes of friends and strangers who say that Bernie's ideas (at least the ones they were exposed to at the time of those conversations) were considered moderate stances.

Either way, my point isn't so much "well everything IS political here" because duh. It's moreso

1) isn't that common place/why isn't it recognized as being commonplace if it is

2) if we truly are the oddity in that regard, how do other countries manage to avoid everything becoming politicized?

Not even in Europe. Yeah he wants universal healthcare, but he’s offering more than any European country. Yeah he wants more worker control, but to a greater extent than even the Nordic countries. And this is combined with a minimum wage increase and an effective nationalization of transportation, energy, and the internet through the green new deal. He’s pretty moderate foreign policy wise I guess, but all of Western Europe has basically the same stance on America’s enemies. I’m not saying all this to criticize Bernie, I really don’t have anything against him going further than Europe is now

All good points. Thoughts on my questions?

I don’t think American people are that political, it’s probably moreso the media that politicizes things. I don’t really know why Europeans are less political, but I’m guessing it may be in part because America as a country hasn’t existed for as long as many other countries, so there’s not as much of a set American identity aside from shared values, and those values are subject to a lot of debate. Apparently Brazil, another recent country, is also very divided across political lines

i think a lot of people don't want to hear this, but the reason - at least to a degree - everything is so politicized in the US is because the world effectively revolves around the US (I am not saying this is a good thing nor do I mean this in a "USA USA USA" type way).
I don't mean this on an individual level either - I am well aware a working family in like, the middle east or east europe doesn't give a s*** about the US. That's not really what I mean. Rather, so much of the globalized nature of things like global economics, militarization, etc. on a political level revolve around the US, as well as on an economic level - i.e. reserve currency & the stock market - and on an entertainment level, i.e. hollywood. So much of what the US does has top-down effects on the rest of the world that other places can afford not to be political because essentially someone else is being absorbed into being political for them.
Like if Lithuania decided to break up into 3 countries tomorrow, who would care? But if the US did, how do you handle the stock market, how do you handle foreign investments, or military protection of certain countries (justified or otherwise), how do you handle the reseve currency of the USD? Everything is politicized in the US because the US has actively centralized itself in the world and now it's paying the price for it by realizing by being centralized everything you do is inherently political.

I'm not really sure what you mean by politicise everything. There's a huge chunk of the electorate which are non-voters.

I mean every country is going to have those who are engaged politically and those who aren't. I'm not sure you can make a sweeping generalisation just based off the odd convo.

May be missing your point. But generally, the better things are going in a country, the less engaged politically its citizens will be, and vice-versa.

I think this is a big factor, the more important the country is in world politics, the more important politics is to the citizens it seems

everything is political but just not in the way you’re thinking

tho imo usa hasn’t been that politically driven until recently considering you guys only had 55% voter turnout last federal election iirc

People who don’t vote still think their opinions matter, even more than being voting in this country

Politicization >= voter turnout f***ing idiots

It's the culture war since liberals hold power anyway. All politics is more or less relegated to cultural faux political issues, that take attention away from systemic flaws, so hegemony is maintained.

Brazil also has even more police brutality cases than the US.