Reagan was a charismatic movie star and pitchman. He could have sold good news or bad news in a way that Carter or Bush the Elder couldn’t. Being a talented and likeable performer – like Reagan, like Carlin, like Cross – makes a big difference, especially when it comes to being the messenger for hard truths.
Everyone benefiting regardless of skin color?? Helping the homeless? What county are you living in where that would sell to a sufficient number of voters? Because it ain’t the USA.
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To think, it could’ve been called “The United States of Vespuccia”.
And the inhabitants would’ve been called Vespuccians.
Gapminder.org
It’s the business.
Actually, as someone who reads the French-speaking press every day, it’s rare to find that usage, although USans are routinely referred to as Américains. The country is more commonly referred to as ‘les Etats Unies’.
Don’t recall this part of the story, but the earlier part was somewhat the converse. According to Douglas Adams’ book, the entry for Earth in the Guide in Arthur Dent’s time was “Harmless”; the upshot of Ford Prefect’s decades of ‘research’ was the intent to revise this to “Mostly Harmless”.
But sometimes seems to be trying hard.
In my French education, we were specially and sternly scolded for calling it anything other than “Les États-Unis”. French kids always want to Frenchify the word “America” in some way since it’s easier to say. French teachers don’t take such abuses of the language lying down though, and you learn not to challenge them on these points. 
“Les Americains” was fine for the people though, likely because The Secret Stuffy Order Of Making French Language Rules couldn’t come up with anything else.
Correct. But the author of that article will also think of America as one continent. The idea that the Americas are two continents is far from universal in the world and in Germany we all learned in school that it is one.
So they’re not incorrect, they’re just operating from a different basis than you.
There is also the confusion of protestant newspeak. In that use freedom means free of sin or free of temptation to sin. That is I guess free of the influence of the likes of us 
That kind of freedom is not the ability to do what you want but the freedom from any (sinful/wrong/fun/arousing…) option.
This explains how the restricted, theocratic, and extremely controlled societies they (want to) live in can be called free, free from everything that is other. For another example see what religious freedom in the so famous Plymouth Colony meant: Free from any other religious influence.
Fair enough, I do not read the French press and just googled a couple of articles to see if I could find them called America “America” and found an example where they did (well, something similar). I was too emphatic in the idea that calling America “America” was right, when what I really meant was it is not by any stretch wrong and doesn’t show any focus on the US over other countries of the Americas. And really I say that because I’m Canadian and where I’m from people say “America” to mean the US, and would never use it to include ourselves.
Interestingly in my Geography classes in Ireland we learned that Europe is a peninsula as it is not a distinct separate large land mass, but is considered a continent for historical reasons.
It’s not even a peninsula, really, because it doesn’t jut out from Asia. If it weren’t for the fact that we had invented the concept of a continent we wouldn’t be one by any measure.
Grandfathered in I suppose.
Chris Rock did a bit in Bring the Pain where he catalogs the 10 or so cities in the US where significant numbers of Black people live, and he continues with “The whole rest of the country, the other forty states, is filled up with broke-ass white people.”
None of the other continent boundaries are drawn straight down the middle of a large land mass. Eurasian continent (or just Asian since its a lot bigger) seems more accurate
oops. looks like i misremembered.
the original entry was “harmless”. ford hung out on earth, wrote a bunch more, which was then edited down to “mostly harmless”. ( later on, his original article is restored which leads him to discover there’s now a duplicate earth made by the dolphins as their parting gift to humanity. )
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