You probably know that part of the story — Americans don’t have decent public healthcare, transport, media, anything. Meanwhile, places the world does consider civilized, like Canada and Europe, have all those things. What difference does that make? Well, because Americans don’t have public goods, they have deeply weird and regressive social attitudes: they’re materialistic, indifferent, cruel, apathetic, and individualistic. They don’t care about each other at all — and it shows, when they’re busy gunning each other down in the streets.