I lived in CA for 27 years and traveled & worked extensively across most of the USA. The over-riding impression I got is that US citizens are terrified of the idea of pleasure. This is likely because of the toxic influence of Puritanism and Catholicism, both of which push the fable that misery is the road to the happy-hunting-ground in the sky.

Many US citizens work in order to avoid their lives, and the rest work because there's no meaningful social safety net. Hence there's a million homeless people and 27 million without even the most basic form of health care. Fear lurks just beneath the surface of many people's lives.

To compensate for what is a shallow and frankly rather horrific existence, US citizens spend hours each day gawping at mindless entertainments and they buy endless amounts of junk under the misguided belief that material acquisitions will somehow make all the fear and pain and overwork and missed family life "worth it."

Vacations are, consequently, merely an accumulation of photo-ops, themselves the result of bullet-point "must do" lists that are devoid of joy and meaning.