I don't know. I'm not sure why I empathize more with the difficulty getting past what seems to be gross lack of modesty than I do the difficulty accepting overt modesty, but I do.
I understand where you are coming from. That's sort of what I was getting at with the tired old argument about the US being a melting pot. There's far more diversity here, culturally, so I expect more of americans as far as tolerance than I do places that have far less exposure to other ideas and other ways of doing stuff. Not saying it's how it should be....just the way things are, and I know that stuff doesn't change overnight if at all.