A society in which it’s everyone for themselves, that refuses to care for one another, is no society at all. Then everyone acts shocked and horrified at someone who understandably snaps, like modern western culture doesn’t run entirely on schadenfreude.
That was the crux of the idea of a social contract, which is long dead in the US. Now people line up to revel in the suffering of their fellow citizens with “well you were stupid to do xyz in life, so you deserve your suffering haha.”
I’ve been telling people the social contract in America is broken for a long time. To me it’s just becoming more and more obvious. All the small things keep getting worse. No one cares about all the small social stuff anymore. People throw shit everywhere in stores, don’t return shopping carts, follow rules of any kind out in public.
People just don’t respect each other or give a fuck anymore. I mostly blame the boomers and silent generation folks who hurled contual abuse and insults and everyone for the last 20+ years. We’ve got a couple generations that grew up doing the Frontline jobs in retail and the service industry who just got shit on constantly. Maybe that’s just a small part of it, but whatever happened, it’s bad.