Why does the US overreact/underreact to every single thing?

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I'm from Canada.
I am always hearing some news story from the US that drives me crazy, especially since I have no voice to tell them my own personal feelings. Like the other night a 9-year-old gets suspended for sexual harassment because he called the teacher "cute". WTH??? I have two cats and I call them cute all the time OMG I must be sexually harassing them to. And then they mentioned an even younger little boy who got suspended for sexual harassment because he kicked a bully in the testicles... when he tried to STRANGLE him! Of course the bully gets away with attempted strangulation but the other kid did what he did in an act of self-defense and he gets suspended???
He's a little kid, his hormones are still dormant!! ! I shouldn't be watching stuff like this but there is almost never anything else on and Canadian news stories are too boring. But it seems to me Americans take everything way too seriously and overreact at the slightest thing. And when they don't it's the other extreme. Underreaction. People are getting away with killing, molesting and other heinous acts of immorality but a kid calls a teacher cute and he has him suspended? Come ON.

I think we bring an extreme Overkill response to a problem by creating Zero Tolerance Policies.

Like policies preventing weapons in school. So a kid who brought a butter knife in their lunch bag gets a suspension.

It is hard to pin down though. Something about American views on almost everything seems extremely polarized these days. It feels like in our politics there is a pendulum that swings back and forth between extremes and we have a really hard time finding a middle way approach to things.

The media that caters to mainstream America (which most Americans don't actually listen to) can only get ratings from sensationalist stories. Serious media can only survive on a subset of the American population. That subset is the one that makes the important decisions around here.

It does feel like... this is a very unanalyzed statement but that the opposing sides of most major arguments are so alike in their skeletons whether it's apparent or not and all that's left to do is split hairs, and split hairs people will with zeal cause people love to argue. I know that made no sense, I'll have to think about it more.

Its why I have an undying hatred for my own country, the stupidity and lazyness that has a stranglehold upon everything.

I don't pay much attention to the media, I prefer to choose when I put my brain at risk for damage rather than be bombarded with constant crap I don't choose to expose myself to.

There are over 300,000,000 United Stateseans. Very few of them over-react. Most do not react at all except to those things that concern them personally.

ruveyn

Well, first there's the media that sensationalizes everything for ratings and the ad dollars that go with them. If it can't be blown up into a big emotional story that will polarize people and make them mad, it doesn't make money. If it doesn't make money, it doesn't get reported.

Then there's our lovely Puritan Calvinist roots, and the ongoing pseudo-Calvinist culture that grew out of them. It's not just Aspies who see everything in black and white. The difference between an Aspie and a Calvinist is that an Aspie acknowledges that the shades of gray exist but has a difficult time discerning them, while a Calvinist can see the shades of gray as clear as the nose on your face, but chooses not to acknowledge them, generally out of self-righteous pride or laziness in making decisions and formulating responses.

No offense intended to our resident Fundamental Christians. Y'all are every bit as valid of persons as I. I just don't care for your belief system, your idea of social structure, or about 67% of everything else about the way you choose to look at and interact with the world.

Stupid country. One of my best friends is thinking of going expatriate in Sweden. I fantasize regularly about tagging along as her charity-case housekeeper.

Lost, what you are describing is the insanity of the post-Marxist left, or what I call Political Correctness. And, yes, the US is eaten up with PC. But it's the pot calling the kettle black for a Canadian to admonish us; Canada is in far worse shape with regards to PC than the US is.

Please consider, you have "hate courts" in your country. Not only can you be fined or imprisoned over matters of conscience, truth is no defense in these courts. For example, Mark Steyn is far from my favorite thinker, but he has hardly done anything to be placed in legal peril. At least the US still has free speech.

There was another case of a Christian photographer who turned down a request to take pictures at a lesbian "wedding". He lost everything defending his beliefs.

If I were a Canadian, jail is the only place I'd feel comfortable. I for one stand in solidarity with the thought criminals. Live free or die!

A tolerant society is not obligated to tolerate the intolerants, as they threaten the order of society itself. Hate-inducing speech is just that. Trying to rile people up to get them to act.

As nice as it would be to blame the media for stupidity like prosecuting a 17 year old who takes nude photos of himself as an adult sex criminal who produces, traffics, and possesses child porn, it's our own fault. Or, as others have pointed out, the Puritans & Calvinists are alive, well, and firmly in control of America several hundred years after their ancestors were kicked out of Europe for p*ssing everyone off and generally being a$$holes.

If you need proof, look at Britain. Britain's mainstream media is so screechingly sensationalist and judgmental, it makes the National Enquirer look tame, yet Britain has largely managed to avoid going to outrageous extremes when it comes to law enforcement despite having dominant parties on the Left and Right that are BOTH horrifyingly authoritarian by American standards. Honestly, I don't know what's worse... having kids arrested for sexcrime because they're kids, or having automated surveillance networks whose extent would have shocked George Orwell himself. Canada and Australia come across as having a more reasonable middle, then you dig a little bit and hear about Canada's Thoughtcrime courts, and Australia's occasional draconian laws relating to public morality and IP law that seemingly come out of nowhere and look like something you'd expect to see in Iran, or at least Singapore.