And incidentally, the FAQ don't mention the United States, either.
But what's really obvious on this site is that many Americans cannot discuss other choices.
I theorize it is because America is so big and powerful and there isn't a visible friendly society with different cultural views in the neighborhood that matters. Large societies that matter are far away, and rivals at best, enemies at worst.
There is a strong sense of "the American way is obviously the best, and everybody who disagrees or has been socialized on different norms is an idiot and must be destroyed".
Every "by the way, in X we don't have Y, we do Z" on this site is a recipe for confrontation.
It's a minority of posters, I'm sure, but they downvote and flag just about everything that isn't "America's way or the highway".
Nobody asks them to declare the Finnish, German or Japanese way to be better. But they simply cannot accept that other societies might be happy with other choices.
And those threads are really garbage.
In which our multi-national law enforcement and legal protagonists grapple with translating their own expectation into their crime's country's actual laws.
> But what's really obvious on this site is that many Americans cannot discuss other choices.
Many of us certainly can, however, America is often whalloped over the head for not being like other countries. In some threads this is made out peacefully, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25766884
In others, America is widdled down to very reductionist arguments that Americans already debate endlessly. Things like, "This is a very uniquely American point of view" as if to eschew our problems like they don't still deserve debate because we should be just like everyone else. An example is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486350 Of course, this can be pretty frustrating because America isn't all the same, though I know it can be easy to perceive it that way. States in America are more like countries in the EU with respect to their homogeneity, or lack thereof. In some ways we have some overtones that are the same, but we're all different. As dang pointed out, HN represents a lot of people from outside Silicon Valley too.
You seem to allude to this here:
> Every "by the way, in X we don't have Y, we do Z" on this site is a recipe for confrontation.
and I agree. Maybe this is people learning they actually are part of a more global community and how to respect one another while also fostering thoughtful, curious debate. I can tell you that I often wake up in the morning to read my threads from the night prior because I want to know what the global community, outside of America, has had to say. As I'm doing right now in fact. That's to say, hearing your voice matters at least to me.
I'll try to pay attention to what gets downvoted, and if that's happening you'll get my upvote.