Where is the outrage of the American public? That is a common question from informed people worldwide. Don’t Americans feel compelled to voice their objections to the death penalty? Why isn’t the American public actively protesting a presidential administration that the majority of Americans did not vote for? Where are the outcries against the obscene disparity of wealth, opportunity and entitlement splitting the nation and the world in two?

To understand the complacency in the American public, one has to look at state of the public in America. Where does the public meet in a nation where most of its citizens live neither in the city, nor the country? Today the vast majority of Americans reside in an endless netherworld of suburbs known as “sprawl.” Wide lawns separate houses. Homes are often situated on exclusively residential streets. No shops. No bars. No places for the public to congregate. Windows are kept shut not only to keep out the winter’s cold, but to hold in the summer’s costly air conditioning.
In many growing areas public transport is non-existent. People travel by car. Often to be car-less in the American suburbs is similar to being leg-less in a European city. Freedom of movement is restricted to those who drive. To drive requires the capital to buy a vehicle, pay for gasoline, repairs, and insurance. In order for a citizen to move about and participate in society, they must be a customer. In fact, the latter term has eclipsed the former in common speech. (Even when services are provided to public, the public is regularly considered a mass of consumers. For example, the United State Post Service refers to its users as customers, as does the New York subway operator, the Metropolitan Transit Authority).

Whereas buses, trains, trams, and subways all create opportunities for a public crowd to congregate, the suburban model obliterates the opportunity for casual public gatherings. Roads are built not for pedestrians but for automobiles. Many neighborhoods offer no sidewalks and so no chance of neighbors encountering each other. The car culture atomizes the public.
With an atomized public, there is no vantage from which to view the public as a whole. In this regard, cities such as Boston, New York and Chicago are anachronisms. Los Angeles is not. The majority of the upper and middle class Americans-as they drive from their remote homes, to their isolated offices, to their specific strip mall for shopping - never glimpsing their fellow American as citizens going about an average day. And so, the concept of the public languishes.

Furthermore, since the means of transport are privately owned, as is the access to healthcare and most communications (the US has a noble but under-funded public broadcast system) Americans have a hard time imagining the benefits of the publicly owned infrastructure. Without a concept of community or public ownership a tremendous sense of distance creeps into the American perspective.
For those satisfied with their lives, it’s possible only to imagine others’ dissatisfaction in the vaguest of terms. Maybe through a newspaper article. Maybe through a documentary on for-profit cable TV. Problems are understood in the abstract. But rarely do such people confront the gritty realm of true experience, of sharing a bus with the poor, or of encountering them on a drive to the office. People might know problems with their minds, but not their hearts.
For materially satisfied people, it’s far easier to imagine that most other people enjoy a similar quality of life. Problems of disadvantaged Americans seem inherently unreal. And if it’s hard for someone in wealthy Grosse Point, Michigan to imagine the problems of those in impoverished Inner City Detroit, imagine how unreal the problems of the earthquake victims in Turkey seem? Comfortable Americans might read about critical issues in the developing world (considering the sugar-coated quality of the American press, that’s a big “might”) but surely they will have trouble finding a point of reference.
It’s not only a case of simple arrogance. It’s a matter of distance--physical and mental--from others. For those not faring so well in the nation, the tremendous sense of distance creates a sense of isolation and hopelessness. Lacking contact with the public at large, national problems are often accepted as personal ones. Making a living is difficult, not because wages are too low, but because of an individual’s ability to find a “good” job. It’s pure luck. Politicians fail to represent voters not because big business underwrites their elections, but because politicians have poor character. Again, a solely personal matter.

So millions of American might want more rights in the workplace. They might want to reexamine the North American Free Trade Agreement. They might damn well want the US to take an active role in the Kyoto Accord; but where does the American public get to encounter itself? Where do strangers exchange their views when they are encapsulated in their cars, in the privately-owned space of their employers, or shopping malls? Millions of Americans may have the same view for improving the nation (gun control) or the environment (alternative fuels) and-owing to the atomized, utterly private existence--- never know how common their point of view is.
The utter anonymity of the atomized culture multiplied by the size of the country creates an overwhelming sense of isolation for those who question the system. There is no writing on the walls in the suburbs. No one dares speak of such matters at work, where their “performance” is being scrutinized. There is certainly no reflection of the discontent on TV or in Hollywood movies, wherein happy endings are the law. So a person’s desire for change is usually followed by a sense of futility. They get tired of feeling lonely for thinking differently. Friends and colleagues are more likely to dismiss progressive thinking as a symptom of the person’s personality rather than consider the political ideas for their own worth. After all, everything in America is personal, and nothing is political: witness the Clinton administration, when the president’s sex-life was discussed as if it actually affected any one but himself and his family.
But such politics-as-entertainment grows old. And people’s outrage is becoming less disguised. Not even TV and movies can quell the growing discontent. Many Americans whose voices have been cut off by the culture of distance and a privatized public can hardly hide their unhappiness-or care to. People will traverse the distance to find others of a like mind.
When they do, average Americans rediscover that they have some voice about the their own fate and that of the United States. It will be a painful process. But the fight for justice will be a satisfying struggle, one that is more compelling and real than any Hollywood movie, or product to be bought and consumed.