Non-Americans may not fully understand your culture, but we sure have to make the effort. After all, we must constantly fortify ourselves against the ramifications of American culture.

For example, the American cultural norm of choosing to keep many of your population uneducated (rather than raising taxes to pay for education), involving religion in politics, and viewing democracy as a corporate-sponsored circus. These uniquely American cultural decisions led to a president who says Canada is a threat to American National security, and also the American economy with our formidable army of mom'n'pop dairy farmers.

So no, we don't really understand American culture. But we have to try.

I, for one, liked Senator McCain, and listen to both Chris Wallace and Shep Smith on Fox News because they strike me as reasonable human beings with integrity.

Conversely, Americans - as a society - do not seem to have much understanding of any culture, nation, philosophy or value system other than their own. Or any interest in learning.

It's important for all Americans to understand that for most Western nations, decisions aren't simply binary. There are more options than "Democrat" or "Republican". And our personal identities are not usually tied to those labels.

Also, most of the rest of the Western world is far, far more "socialist" (as in, providing education, healthcare, clean water and other basic human rights to all citizens regardless of wealth) than Americans. This means many of us would obviously identify most with the more socially minded American party (at this point in history).

For reference sake, Canada's "Conservative Party" is more akin to American Democrats than Republicans. And all our other parties are "left" of that. That's not us being brainwashed by American media or being part of some reddit Democrat conspiracy. That's just most Canadians having different values than most Americans. And my perspective is that a lot of EU nations are even further left of us.

Finally, for many Commonwealth nations at least, our primary source of media is publicly funded and non - partisan. BBC, ABC, CBC to name a few (imagine if NPR was the main American news source). This means our tax dollars fund proper journalism, rather than corporations feeding us their individual private agendas in whatever manner brings in the most ad revenue.

TL;DR. The whole Western world isn't just brainwashed by American media. We're a collection of distinct, generally non-binary nations and cultures who can't be shoved into the American world view box. We have different values. That doesn't mean we're secret Democrats. That term doesn't even hold meaning outside the USA.

TL;DR. TL;DR. The United States isn't the only country on planet Earth.