I have to concur. Even when I was a kid in Ireland, the attitude was “you can’t do anything about it” when civil wrongs were committed on the people by the government.
deTocqueville explains it as the difference between centralized administration and centralized power. America has tended towards the latter; the central government directing the states to observe federal law but leaving the state and local government latitude in deciding how they should carry out this broad directive, thereby making the states and local officials partners in the federal government, involved and with a personal stake. Europe has tended towards the former, micro-managing every aspect of implementing central directives, leaving the locals no role other than servile obedience. As a result, they passively wait for those in charge to help them. DeTocqueville was writing in th 1830s. America has since gone over to centralized administration in many aspects, but the culture remains one that encourages individual initiative, even as the central government until this past year did all it could to discourage it.