I do think your points are valid, though I think part of the reason for Americans mostly viewing everything in American context comes down to the size of the U.S. The country is so big and there is even a bit of diversity of culture in different regions. Each U.S. state was (debatablely) originally meant to act as its own nation, with the federal government being something more akin to the EU.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but what I am getting to something here. Though I have never been to Europe, I do understand that there is a larger breadth of culture, largely a product of much more long standing civilization and history, most of which developed centuries ago when long distance travel was less easy. In the modern era, it is more common to travel in between countries and even speak multiple languages, making it much more obvious how diverse the cultures of the world can be.

Coming back to America, it is a settler colonial nation that is much younger in scope, so the culture is a bit more hegemonic but far larger in scope. All that is to say, an American who lives in New York could travel to Florida (roughly 1100 miles), and the culture would be a bit different, but no where’s near the equivalent travel of, say, a trip from Poland to Italy.

Again, I want to be clear, this is not a defense, just an explanation of part of the reason you see such American centric discussion. For many Americans, even if they have traveled, they very well may have largely only ever experienced the greater American sphere of culture.

His music is properly just folk/ballads but I only bring it up because it matches every other criteria and you might be surprised how much you like him is David Rovics. I’d recommend starting with something like “Who Would Jesus Bomb”

If you like hardcore punk, “Stray From The Path” is also great. Some of their more political songs being “Goodnight Alt Right” and “Guillotine”.

To be fair with Pat the Bunny, I think some of his earlier work glorified substance abuse a little. Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains specifically teetered the line between “it’s messed up that I’m an addict” and “I’m gonna get high in this parking lot”. That said, as a whole, his bands really mark his stages of recovery in a way that is very interesting.

I recently introduced my otherwise cool libertarian coworker to Mischief Brew (The vocalist’s band following The Orphans) and am hoping it speaks to him.

I use John Oliver as an indicator of how far a progressive who otherwise isn’t that involved politically is willing to see things. His content can be useful to know where to start when planting seeds to radicalize them further.

I LOVE void, while I did need to do a bit more research at times, I felt like it taught me more about how an OS functions. The first time I made my own unit script was also super satisfying.

Charts as well as collages on Orpheus! Basically user made Playlist but for whole albums.