It doesn't *just* affect the US, for sure. Ask anyone who saw the start of a war. How the days before they went to cafes, and shook their heads that it was all so severe. But it would be averted right? Right? It won't happen to us in the cafe where the old men play chess and the kids play outside

The US self conception of exceptionalism, including "never having lost a war" and the fact that the constitutional order has never been disrupted (except Reconstruction which is viewed as a return ex ante in a lot of common conception) really makes us susceptible to this as a culture though.

We saw this in Ukraine, and that’s with the Biden-Harris administration screaming as loudly as they could that the Russians were, in fact, not just putting troops on the border for “exercises”.

I had the same feeling of watching a very slow-motion train wreck with COVID approaching.

You also see it a bit in popular fiction. Take a look at movies. Characters often find themselves in impossible, terrible situations. Fictional situations of overwhelming severity. Someone's family kidnapped; aliens invade; evil villain threatens to destroy everything type stuff

Yes, a friend of mine (Ukrainian living in UK) pooh-poohed, loudly & repeatedly, the idea that Putin was about to attack Ukraine right up until he did. As if she felt compelled to go against the grain. She’s intelligent (PhD) & usually a realist. Maybe “I’m from there & know better” got her?

Patlabor 2 is a Japanese film that showcases the same disconnect/anxiety, and I think articulates it better than I’ve ever seen elsewhere.

Watching The Big Short right now. "8% default rate can't happen because that would mean millions would be homeless"

I have found it very difficult to overcome "it can't happen here" complacency, since I can't point to a recent instance of it literally happening here already.

Okay but in that case you can't really do anything? Like what is the alternative to going to a café, you're gonna cry at home at the inevitability of war? With an internal threat you can at least do activism. An external invasion *does* just happen to you.

The story that sticks out in my head is that Members of Congress (as I recall it) took picnics to the first Battle of Manassas/Bull Run, and then had to flee.