The idea of fate as a villian is not very American at all, fatalism is antithetical to our national ideas of self-determination, of the modern idea of the self made man. Americans believe, in many ways, that they can even cheat death, look at our national obsession with health. This belief is part and parcel of the package of modernity. To believe in gods or fate is "superstition" because they interfere with our deeply held belief that, good or bad, we create our own destinies (thus we deserve whatever we get).