Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar or nationalistic flamewar (this is a bit of both). Those paths just lead to internet hell, and we're clinging to little clumps of grass and the occasional rock trying to stave off the downward slide into that abyss.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Part of it may be lack of compassion but that it certainly not all. Part of it is that Americans have been led to believe that government can do nothing right and that the free market is all that is needed to solve the problem. Which is incorrect, but here we are.

Certainly government is competent in many places, but the performance of the American national and many state governments throughout the pandemic hasn't exactly been confidence inspiring. I don't think Americans who believe that their government isn't capable of many simple tasks are delusional.

They aren't delusional about the government. But there is some delusion that private business or the "free market" can necessarily handle all these same problems entirely better.