Recently, talking to citizens of this country, I have been struck by a combination of ignorance and resignation. Believing that things are somehow not exactly good or right, the people I've spoken to seem to adopt an attitude of measured resignation.
Yet, this is not tempered by actual knowledge of how bad things really are in the United States.
If I were to recommend one source for the claim that things are bad, I might recommend The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson (I misspelled his name earlier--whoops!) and Kate Pickett. There are a variety of charts there which measure quality of life--and in all of them the USA winds up on the bottom--as compared to other industrialized countries.
Another source might be Erik Olin Wright and Joel Roger's American Society; How it Really Works. (This is not a work I have studied carefully, but I did read parts of the internet pre-publication post.)
But, that general phenomenon is not new. I have a clear memory of regularly reading in the Slovak press what various UNESCO studies had to say about the low quality of life in the USA.....
A disturbing rhetorical trend is the American's willingness to justify a corrupt and unjust system with the remark "every system [[health care, political, economic...]] has its problems." That represents an evasion. It frees the mind from focusing upon the real problem. It's the sort of universal thought-avoiding solvent that could be used to justify all sorts of tyranny and worse.
The problem isn't about tinkering around the edges to make something smoother or better; it is about fundamental inequality and injustice.....unnecessary misery and suffering, the degradation of our humanity...
Note:
"The Spirit Level" has stirred up a good bit of controversy. However, to judge from the Wikipedia article about the book, the authors have taken the time to answer critics..... Anyone interested in knowing more might take a look at Wikipedia.... There seem to be a good number of links there....
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