[piva00]

Paranoia is the USA's way of life, when life always seems to be teetering on the edge of a cliff: losing your job at a moment's time, losing your life savings for a healthcare emergency, losing your kid to a school shooting, losing your stuff to burglars. Any of these have a very low chance of happening but they can be so life-changing that Americans seem to always be in some state of paranoia, a low-trust society with few safety nets and a highly-competitive mindset is primed for that.

American media just capitalises on the sentiment, it's a vicious cycle of abusing paranoia. The government does it too, just look at the red-scare from the Cold War that feeds into American public discourse to this day, anything remotely socially progressive is "communist".

It's amusing and sad to watch from a distance.

[RealityVoid]

I've observed this as well, I do wonder though if that doesn't strongly encourage competitivity(is this word right? autocorrect highlights it, huh) and make people work... well, more. More effective, more time, more angry. It's certainly one possible explanation for why they dominate in many areas. But it does sound like such an exhausting thing.

[gosub100]

I don't think it makes us work more, but I think it makes us less satisfied with our lives. Which ultimately fuels the consumerism and pleasure-seeking.

[RealityVoid]

Well, that solves the consumption part of the things, but not the production side.

[consteval]

The production side of things comes from exploitation - the US is the strongest imperialist force in the world. We don’t just exploit the periphery, we also exploit our own citizens to the maximum they can bear.

[jsnider3]

> competitivity "competitiveness" might be the word you want.

[gusmally]

competition?

[chrisco255]

Well if it's worked so well thus far, why change it up? I suspect that if a country is not at least a little paranoid about the competition that it doesn't stay #1 for long.

[piva00]

To me it's a problem of causality, does it actually made the USA be "#1" for long? Is it helping society to be this paranoid about everything and everyone?

I'm no sociologist to answer that but I question if it's a causal link or if it's more a case of "despite the", what if the USA could be doing better without the paranoia, maybe it's a drag and not a push... It surely seems to be dragging society down into a dark path.