How did "we" come to this? You're asking the largest military wielder and prison population and the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on real people, people going about their contained lives wanting to wake up to see another day, how "we" came to this.

- Hiroshima

- Nagasaki

- Vietnam

- Constant US policy to support genocidal dictators around the world who mass slaughter "their" people, so long as US corporate interests gain over sovereign interests.

Millions of killings later directly and indirectly from US hands, entire lands and societies literally poisoned into waste at US policy over the past 70 years, and one asks how invading Iraq (and Afghanistan) on imaginary and unjustified pretexts was possible. The answers are shocking and simple.

There are a couple classic "American ways" in spirit. The first has some idealistic value (e.g. individual freedom, can-do attitude). Then the second is one that silences all else: hear no evil, see no evil, support our troops (i.e. in reality, support the political monsters who use them). The simplest answers to your question are related to deeply rooted combinations of nationalism, racism, pride, intolerance, regional proximity to other nations, and systems of governance that are both insufficiently compartmentalized and that run on forced funding (taxation). Guaranteed funding, especially with only the masking of "democracy," was a fast path for a super power that thinks itself a "super hero" in the world's eye -- and largely was seen as such to those who didn't face the brunt of its violence -- to guarantee its continued exploits and an accelerating industry of war. Elections put little if any checks/balances upon a congressional network of plunderers who mostly serve the same corporate and violent interests, policies, and strategists, but through lightly varying vocabulary come election. Paranoia that the US could reasonably claim in that last 'new century' and into this one is dismissed by policies that become brutal and offensive.

1. Google the American timelines and legacy of its direct and proxy imperialism: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism

2. Oliver Stone's Showtime series, "Untold History of the United States," is quite worth watching in full. Sure, we can all find faults with it. It's not intended to give a "balanced" account. Rather, it's a crash course in provoking thought about the seldom discussed or even known aspects of US policy compared to the general public and its vapid historical accounting of its negative actions. It's 10 episodes. http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-u...