You're attaching the issue to the US (or maybe western society), when in fact this issue is inherent to humans as a whole. People are able to create mental con

You're attaching the issue to the US (or maybe western society), when in fact this issue is inherent to humans as a whole. People are able to create mental connections between things. They are able to see patterns and extrapolate. This is one of the things that separates us from most other species and gives us tremendous capabilities, such as the ability to examine the past for mistakes and plan things out for the future. It also leads to storytelling and culture - ways to rapidly adapt at a societal level rather than a genetic or behavioral one. However, this capability doesn't have to be 100% accurate to work effectively - it only needs to be effective most of the time to provide a significant competitive advantage as far as survival. You can see this in any number of current or past societies, from small tribes to continental civilizations - beliefs and behaviors develop and become standardized/traditional, which are frequently a mix of useful/effective and pointless. A simple example would be prayer - consistently, human societies invent higher powers that they ascribe control of various aspects of the world to and construct rituals around them, and regardless of the lack of evidence, you can find this is pretty much all human societies. The details, of course, vary widely. In short, humans have never had a firm grasp on reality - we've already invented things and filled in the blanks with our own imagination, amped up our importance in the universe, because we're limited in scope as far as what we can interact with and control. Today things are both better and worse than in the past - we have cultural patterns like the scientific method, which ideally gives us more reliable information than most prior constructs; tools that expand our ability to examine the universe around us, giving us a better idea of where we are; consistently better information transfer (spoken word > written word > mass-produced written > analog mass media > digital). But at the same time, these things can be used to spread incorrect information just as much as correct; things can be cherry-picked, ignored, manipulated; logical fallacies abound; and, as ever, people will see the things they want to see to fit their patterns and beliefs, ignoring or deeming irrelevant the pieces that don't fit for them. We know more than ever as a species and society; but individually it is completely beyond anyone's grasp to gain a solid understanding of everything we know simply because there is so much. We're relegated to trusting each other - and unfortunately, people don't choose who they trust based on how accurate those people might be, but on things like social relations, world-view match, and so on.