However, I think we are now exhibiting something that was always there but we managed to cover up in previous decades.
Looking at the U.S. through its formation to the 20th century, there was no concern for the weak, for the downtrodden. We used racism and genocide to carve out the country and build wealth. Our avarice and selfishness was apparent to Alexis de Tocqueville when he toured the nation in the first third of the 19th century.
We might have ended chattel slavery but we were still eaten up with bigotry. Exploitation was of no concern until the Progressive Era at the close of the 19th century. Even then, reform was hard fought and piecemeal.
Into the 20th century, lynching was still rampant. The Ku Klux Klan enjoyed a national resurgence. Jim Crow ruled in law down south and only in practice further north.
It took the drastic conditions of the Great Depression to create more reform for our most vulnerable and even then, those had to be withheld from African Americans in order earn votes from Southern lawmakers. Those social safety net advances were popular among most working class white Americans until conservative opponents managed to tie the idea of "welfare" and other type programs with people of color in most Americans' minds.
This nation has always been greedy, cruel, selfish and racist. We just had the advantage of good public relations. Now that international observers can see us more readily, can compare us with other democratic nations, they are starting to see through the fancy facade.
It's still the same litter box; they can just see the nasty bits now.
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