The US has no living memory of this at home. These things happen to /other/ people on the same screens where they shoot lasers or singlehandedly take on a cartel. So we sit in our cafes where the old men play chess and the children play outside, and we shake our heads that it is all so severe.
On the other hand... insurmountable problems happen to USAnians all the time. Hurricanes destroy homes. Family budgets are decimated by layoffs. Health issues force people into bankruptcy and starvation. Maybe because they're shared in the same medium as the horror stories they don't carry through?
even when members of groups who already faced horrors in this country/on this land (enslavement, Jim Crow, internment of Japanese Americans, genocide of Indigenous people, for ex.), try to tell the rest of us it can happen here, we tend to ignore them
Another version of a horror story, if you've lived with violence in a placid society, where the city/village is fine and quiet but there's evil beneath, but no one sees it, or cares. That horror story is the story for lynchings or gay bashing or captivity when everything else looks totally normal
It really depends on which Americans you're talking about
The thing you point out in this thread reminds me of interviews with Ukrainians right before Russia invaded. It couldn’t possibly happen, right? Putin wouldn’t be so bold. And then the worst possible thing happened.
It's a form of decadence, IMHO.
I presume McCarthyism has been wiped from collective memory/discourse?
I feel like the US has had this happen twice, but only to Hawaii and New York - which most Americans still consider "not here."
I think a lot of people are trying to guard against a trauma by pretending like they are choosing to going along with whatever happens but the apathy they are performing makes their fears more likely to come true. Thinking it can't happen here is the only thing that makes sense right now.