This is begging the question. I would say the US spirit most prevalent on this site is neofeudalist, not democratic. The discourse here has always tended to defend or excuse monopolist behaviour ("it's their app store/OS/device, they should have 100% control over what happens with it") and discourage small or local initiatives ("this will not scale and therefore you shouldn't waste effort on making things better for only these 100,000 people").
Tbh I've never felt the SV culture (or the HN ethos around here) is
representative of the USA generally. They do say "rugged
individualism leads to ragged individuals". My experience of the many
USians I know personally is positively humane albeit they are all too
easily led and prone to go along to get along in a way that is
detrimental to their own interests. I think if they genuinely behaved
as frontier rebels (rather than played at it) they wouldn't tolerate
Trump, Musk, Vance an the like for even a few seconds.
This is begging the question. I would say the US spirit most prevalent on this site is neofeudalist, not democratic. The discourse here has always tended to defend or excuse monopolist behaviour ("it's their app store/OS/device, they should have 100% control over what happens with it") and discourage small or local initiatives ("this will not scale and therefore you shouldn't waste effort on making things better for only these 100,000 people").