askchapo

Americans do not generally have a third place where they spend time in common. Sometimes they go to a coffee shop or something. But there's no such thing as the town square or the neighborhood market where the old people hang out or the weekly potluck. You don't know your neighbors or, even if you do, you spend no time with them. You do basically nothing as a community.

There are exceptions but they're very limited and are usually somehow tied to the chamber of commerce or a tourism board or something.

Culturally, when faced with a problem, you're supposed to just deal with it as best you can, not bring it up as a problem to the community (the community does not exist). Sometimes people try to get together to help others but it inevitably turns into a charity that becomes part of the NGO industrial complex, a way to make money for the "leadership" team and give the people responsible (bourgeois) a nice tax break and a spot on that leadership team for their progeny.

Folks can barely even socialize with each other most of the time. When forced into proximity under amicable terms and with a shared interest, some will eventually get along, at first being surprised at the people around them and discovering that they can talk to them for more than 10 minutes without getting frustrated or needing to pay them for the time. Most of the time they cannot talk about anything without getting heated pretty quickly. No capacity for cooling a situation down, it's always time to fight.

Also getting Americans to form a union is like pulling teeth. It's possible but really fucking hard because a critical number of people will have a series of false consciousnesses that are about their own superiority or an ideology that makes all things individualistic.