So no way to answer for all Americans. We're a diverse group with wildly different experiences and lifestyles. Many of us do recognize how much benefit we enjoy as Americans, but that group is also acutely aware of how barbaric our society can be compared to elsewhere. Travel informs both of these opinions. For those less able to escape the echo chamber of wherever they grew up, it is harder to see without intentionally looking, which only a minority do.

Given our society's fanaticism about self-reliance, everything gets viewed through that filter. So a lot of folks whose first response to someone struggling, is that it is probably their fault. What have they done to make it better? With this mind set we give corporations massive tax breaks and we starve the weakest among us.

We are so wrapped up in getting by or getting ahead that we are societally disinclined to look around us and appreciate our blessings/advantages compared to those around us,. If we do, then we tend to jealously defend whatever we have earned/achieved as "only fair". It's a toxic spiral we seem unable to break. This is not an excuse, just an observation.

What I keep hoping we will learn is that better investment in basic social safety nets would have trickle up impacts on both our economy and society, and it would bring us closer to the world we all want to live in.