They line up to plop down their money on the 320 million-to-1 odds of winning a lottery jackpot.
They go online to gamble on “meme” stocks and cryptocurrencies.
They love watching risk-takers like Evel Knievel and his son perform (both are now dead); and they jump out of airplanes, bungee-jump, and go on thrill rides (which have gotten a lot more sophisticated — and hair-raising — since the original roller coaster).
People build homes in floodplains, wildfire areas, and landslide zones. In Washington State, thousands of homes have been built atop Mt. Rainier’s old lava flows, ignoring the risk that an eruption of that active volcano could produce a modern-day Pompeii.
When the worst global pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu swept through our country, millions of Americans brushed aside medical advice, refused to wear masks or get vaccinated, mingled with crowds; and hundreds of thousands of them ended up needlessly dead.
Parents gamble with their children’s health by refusing to get them their school vaccinations, and now this news story says millions of U.S. kids are suffering from “long Covid,” while this news story says U.S. Covid deaths jumped 44% last week because “people aren’t taking this seriously.”
Do Americans have no sense? Are they ignorant? Or do they have a culture-bred gambling streak? The original Mayflower passengers and Jamestown settlers came to the New World, not knowing what they would find here, simply gambling on a better life. Americans have been gambling ever since.