The attitude of high-pressure tactics is deeply baked into American sales culture. It's conventional wisdom that you need high commissions, and high commissions

The attitude of high-pressure tactics is deeply baked into American sales culture. It's conventional wisdom that you need high commissions, and high commissions necessarily entail high stress; you can't have "I can make $20,000 from the right deal" without "I could lose $20,000 if anything goes wrong". So sales organizations will often be brutally honest (and frankly mean) in ways that, you're right, would be a very bad idea in any other context.