I’ve thought about this for awhile before posting. To me, it’s not just Americans. It’s every country on earth (except strangely enough for Dictatorships)

ALL countries look out for their own interests. And a content populace is a large part of that. It’s just that some countries are better at it than others.

Criminal law is basically self interest fully encoded. “Well I don’t want bad things to happen to me, so lets codify them all and make it illegal to do any of them.”