"The American people seem to sense that it is a moment to stand down and think hard about whether something's amiss in their society"

we once spent a year in New Zealand doing furlough replacement for a missionary pastor. There, the attitude toward individual responsibility vs. societal responsibility was (to our minds) markedly different from that in the US. Shortly after Katrina hit back in the US and people were blaming the govt, we stumbled across a NZ pamphlet about what to do in case of a tsunami. Synopsis: if you’re under water, we are too. Save yourself. :-)

But another everyday example of this attitude was found in the fact that there were very few guardrails along the roadside. To us, it seemed like a dangerous oversight so we asked several Kiwi friends about it. The general consensus: “Why do you need guardrails? Just stay on the road.”