America just seems to have an unmatched number of people who are fully committed to living in a fantasy world and their entire project in life is to attempt to prevent the intrusion of any ideas which might necessitate any mental discomfort or introspection at all. This runs through the culture imo. Germans have to open history books and read about how 80 years ago they were the worst country in the world. One of the founding myths of Australia is Gallipoli, which is all about how Australia was a pawn of world powers getting chucked into the meat grinder and the story is just about courage, mateship and stoicism in the face of a doom beyond our control. What are the American stories like that? Slavery is a thing which was heroically ended by Lincoln. Ditto Civil Rights, the emphasis is on the eventual American victory over itself.
Same thing with American Protestantism, once accurately summarized by Felix on Chapo as “If you’re white… dude, you rock. Just keep doing what you’re doing”. The difference with, like, Catholic monks whipping themselves in monasteries is striking. Faith is to be observed not by self-criticism, looking within, instead the classical American expression of faith is giving money to people on TV.
Trump is the final boss of this, a living avatar of this philosophy that one need never apologise, never accept that things might be complicated or messy, and never tolerate for even a second that self-criticism or introspection might be warranted. The reason that guy was in tears on TV because he couldn’t go to Lowe’s or whatever has nothing to do with what he wanted to buy. What’s in jeopardy is the entire worldview. That’s what I think the answer is to the bolded above. It’s like the reason all libertarians are climate change skeptics, because climate change would necessitate collective action and the perfect gleaming edifice of their philosophy can’t tolerate even one counterexample.
Edit: The Right in Australia are the same with climate change, like since Australia depends so much on commodity exports, the answer has to be that it’s fine, we can keep doing it, and so that’s the answer they come up with. The Trumpian phenomenon is the generalization of this to, like, everything. The conclusion is always “this is not a thing which requires me to self-criticize or change my behaviour” and you work backwards to get to that. Coronavirus is therefore a hoax, or overblown, or something that can’t be avoided anyway, or whatever premise du jour will get you to the conclusion.