First of all, this is such an excellent post, and thank you.

>>seeing other people who care as weak, unmanly and naive

I'm sad to say that this is true everywhere I've been. The attitude is everywhere in the US... it's only that in the US people are trained to be quiet about it. My observation, everywhere I go, is that only smart, observant people do not mistake kindness for weakness.

>> because fuck you, that's why

So, this is one thing I do like about the US. The police in the US do not get involved in anything unless you pull out a gun and shoot somebody... even then, they really don't care. On the other hand, this kind of fake "manliness" you're describing is sort of self-limiting in the US; it tends to look ridiculous to us when we travel overseas or when we see new immigrants from (choose a chaotic country) act this way - because here, the guy you jump in line in front of might look like nothing but he also might have a 9mm. I say this from the perspective of someone who has seen multiple shootings at the bar around the corner from my house in the past year, for things as stupid as someone acting rudely.

Stupid, selfish, short-sighted people are the same everywhere. Being rude is really the issue; one does not need a God or a police force to avoid being rude. Being rude and taking advantage for oneself is cultural, and I actually believe it's impossible to take a culture who has been raised that way and make them - under any police regime - act differently. (I'll qualify that further by telling you that all my grandparents came from Russia in the 1920s, and spoke Russian, but they hated the criminal type of Russian scavengers who came out of that ruthless wasteland from the 1980s onward). Taking care of others outside your family requires two things: 1. a functioning rule of law, yes, but 2. a view passed to you from your parents that treating others well will cause you to flourish more than trying to take advantage of them. This cannot be enforced. It has to be internalized and understood. I really think it's better in many ways to see what kind of people you're speaking with bluntly than to listen to the sophistry of the modern version of the same avarice as it presents itself in New York or Los Angeles. I can sit and listen to the racism toward black people in the American South or toward Aboriginal people in Australia, and just openly disagree. That's better to me than listening to people who I know are racist trying to sound politically correct in Seattle.

>> I know that cutting in lines is not the most important metric for life quality in the world

I think it's the second-most important metric. Being polite.
But it's worse to be somewhere everyone is polite and everyone is a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is to me the most important metric.

(This is actually what my problem is with Thailand. True, no one cuts in line. But there's so much bottled-up anger that no one can admit to, and suddenly it explodes).

But not cutting in line - in my book - is representative of the best human value. So I absolutely agree with your view and don't think you should say it's not important. It's possibly the most important thing.

A shout out to the Argentines, when my ex-gf was possibly kidnapped there, people asked me to cut in line in front of them at an ATM that was running out of money, where they had been waiting for a long time, just from seeing the look on my face.