Absentia is right on in that post. The US establishment has managed to divert, defuse and ameliorate much of Americans' social conscience toward individual cases of pain and suffering and joy. When describing the pain and suffering, the newz media focus on special cases of extreme pain, and usually one that comes with a happy or near-happy ending, or one that says to Americans, this is the way it has to be. Americans spirit for helping the poor is world renowned. In fact, I would say billions of people around the world are the same way and have built-in drives for sharing and contributing to the greater good. Very many Americans are just like us in this regard. They can be very caring and generous people, I've seen it up close. And Americans love happy endings. They like backing the underdog. And the corporate newz media gives them the happy endings and underdog wins the day feel good stories, like 24/7.
How could anything be wrong, really? We all know about the dumbing down of America. We even think it's happening in Canada to some extent. The truth is that there are very many well educated and intelligent Americans. Tens of millions of them in fact. How could they not be aware of the things their government has done around the world? What European country of the 1930s might this also describe?