What do you want?
What's in it for you?
How do you gain from helping me?
These are usually the questions asked when someone is kind for no reason other than because it's the right thing to do.
What's worse is how "comedy" has made being polite something that is laughed at in entertainment but distrusted in real life. People tend to think you're hiding something when you're polite.
But for Americans it's what many of us try to do. We're nice until we're taken advantage of, then we can be mean and hard to get along with. Like the Hank Williams Jr. song says, "We say grace, and we say ma'am, and if ain't into that we don't give a damn."
So go out and be kind and polite. It's part of being American (at least in my world).
