Something deep and bizarre is going on with the accusation of “passive aggressiveness.”   I hear all the time that an entire city of people or region of a country is “passive aggressive.”  Here is the pattern I am detecting: if you are new to a culture, a subculture, a region, and you are having trouble with the communication of expectations, things go awry.  And when they do?  You just go ahead and call your host culture “passive aggressive.”  That just about takes care of the whole problem right there. You asked and didn’t get.  Or you didn’t ask and weren’t told.  Or you wanted to ask, but didn’t know how, and no one helped you out.  Hell, they’re all passive aggressive.