I am currently spending the semester studying abroad in London and, almost immediately after hearing my accent, Londoners want to talk about one thing: American politics. It’s one of their initial instincts, second only to making fun of the way I say “data.”

While I have been preparing to answer a multitude of questions from the people I meet abroad about our country’s current political state, the funniest thing about the conversations I have had so far is that many of them aren’t simply debating current events. Rather, they have turned into conversations where Europeans are giving me advice on what I should do, pitying me for being an American.

Talking about the election triggers this the most. “If you don’t mind me asking, who are you voting for?” I’ll answer them and they’re typically content with my answer. Yet, the advice pours in anyway. One time, a Canadian suggested that I vote for Donald Trump in effort to overturn the system. “He would be so bad in office that they would have to kick him out, right?” In another case, a guy in Italy suggested that my friend should vote for Trump because “the race relations are bad in America anyway, no matter who we elect as president.” That’s the spirit!

Yet another group decided to discuss America’s immigration system with me. While we were chatting, one girl was trying to explain to another that you can only become an American citizen if you were born there. The other one simply responded with something along the lines of “Oh, that’s why their immigration system is so messed up.” I don’t know where she got that information from, considering America is known to be a melting pot of different cultures whose population is built from immigrants. Needless to say, I had to remind them of America’s history. 

However, my personal favorite conversation thus far was with a guy who decided he wanted to debate America’s gun laws and the recent police shootings. A little context: Most police officers in England don’t carry guns, with the exception of the few that stay at their post in certain areas. Therefore, the idea that nearly all police officers carry a gun with them in America is a little foreign to the English. After about a five-minute conversation that I eventually left out of annoyance, I learned that the guy thought that American police officers are “frustrated with the crime rates” and choose to act on it with their “readily available guns.” In talking to him, he was essentially insinuating that American crime is so bad that cops are bound to resort to killing in order to fix the problem. Regardless of your view on the American gun laws, you and I both know that this makes little sense and the shootings are part of a bigger issue, not just “cop frustration.”        

Since it probably isn’t the top priority of Europeans to follow American politics, people tend to soak up every nuance of information about the subject from any source that they come across, rather than taking the time to investigate certain topics. The most popular publication in London is The Guardian, which is clearly not a fan of Donald Trump or his outlandish statements. The diction used in the articles helps me understand when people ask me questions like, “How did Trump even get this far?” Nobody I have talked to so far understands how the American political system let someone so ill-received be a nominee for a major party and are pitying me, as an American, for having to choose between two less-than-ideal candidates. Londoners are only seeing one side of the picture though. As an American, I have been able to talk genuinely to Trump supporters to get their take on the situation, giving me both perspectives. Londoners, on the other hand, are really only receiving one perspective. This causes them to have an overwhelmingly negative outlook on American politics as a whole.

If I am speaking candidly, it is kind of embarrassing to talk about the current election. Our fellow countries have great leaders like Justin Trudeau and Sadiq Khan and, with each question, it hurts just a little bit more that we are inevitably trading in President Barack Obama for a new president soon.

There is little I can do to avoid talking about America’s political climate and that’s OK. I don’t mind talking to people about the issues because I realize that people find it interesting, especially considering that, from across the pond, it seems like our political climate is a hot mess just seconds from imploding. All I can really do now is show people that America is not simply a gun happy, immigration-hating political disaster by telling people when they are wrong about certain presumptions.