It never occurs to anyone that in almost every other country in the world, such a place wouldn’t be necessary.

Yep. It reminds me of this .

Every heartwarming human interest story in America is like "he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine" and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you'd need to pay to prevent it from being used.