> I don't think the US can be summed up with a single word.

I think it can, I've been thinking about this and it's "scam".

Like, think how often everything in our country is a straight up scam. Healthcare, parking tickets, basically anything you buy. It's almost all snake-oil flim-flam every which way and as a 'consumer' you have to wade through the mire every single day to get scammed as little as possible.