Great pain can exist among normalcy, when I visited the usa as a kid something that distressed me was that it was possible to walk a few streets and go from insane luxury to seeing people sleep over vents to avoid dying in the cold.

But to "understand modern usa" you have to recognise that these are extremes and a lot of people are just living their lives, with a mix of good and bad. Even people who might be subject to government tyranny can, in another phase of life, see that as some aspect of the past they disliked but which didn't turn them against the whole project.

In my life my government made me get steralised and "inspected" to change my ID card, but also I have a house because my dad had a good government job with a pension that got blown up to insane levels because of privatisation near the end of his career, I've been saved from death by doctors for free a few times, I have access to safe food and water. Things are getting worse and were always very unequal which is why I'm a watermelon but even so life is complicated and you can't judge how my country works throughthrough any one of these simple stories.