People outside of the United States, surveys say, have got some issues with America. They don't like what our government does, or the pervasiveness of our influence, or the cultural artifacts exported throughout the world that many see as evidence of a corrupt and declining society that has neither the interest nor the willingness to educate themselves, even slightly, about the history and cultures, etc., of other nations. This is a fair critique, although it is a little off the mark. We Americans generally don't really even care much about our own history and culture, as has been noted many times. History to us is less a grand narrative of events past as it is a grab bag of half-remembered people that did Great Things and events that were Important, but these people and events, decontextualized, have effectively become Rorschach ink blot tests that tell more about the person invoking them than about the actual person. One could ask the average conservative about Ronald Reagan and get a litany of superlatives about our 40th President: morning in America, low taxes, small government, strong leader, and so on it goes. History is a bit more complex, though, as this same Reagan also raised taxes repeatedly, did not significantly alter the role of government, and started the movement away from the egalitarian society of the post-WWII era and more toward the New Gilded Age in which we now find ourselves. The former is the more common perception, of course.
So, the history stuff done, what about Our Great Culture? The one that the Tancredos of the world feel is under imminent threat from waves of Mexican Immigrants? It is true that America has a rich tradition in art and in words. We've produced some pretty good playwrights and a few decent philosophers. America has sparked several legitimate cultural movements, including film noir and abstract expressionism. But surely these things are not under assault from The Immigrants? In any event, the average American these days has little use, or knowledge, of any of this stuff. Politics is little different: to Americans, who have not been oppressed in ages, freedom is merely a watchword. It is something invoked in truck commercials and Memorial Day advertisements. Even before the American Revolution, Americans never had to live in a police state akin to Communist Russia or East Germany, though we should be credited for opposing Communism partly because of the horrifying abuses of human rights that occurred under their banners.
So, it is difficult to define American culture, since the things usually referred to as "culture" are generally ignored, if not disdained, by the average American. To him (and her), culture is mostly found on the television and in the movies, not to mention the ubiquitous advertisements for products that pop up everywhere. The media has become the main purveyor of culture, and it has far more power than any other group or individual has ever had in earlier times. Part of this is due to the vastly greater amount of information available to the average Joe, with the advent of the internet as well as, to a far greater degree, the still dominant force of television. In any event, because of the power of the media, American culture consists largely of popular television shows and movies that are bland enough for a sufficient amount of people not to object to them. The media's power is impossible to overstate. The prevailing model of advertising these days is not to advertise a product, introducing the points in favor of the product, but to buy enormous chunks of advertising time in order to so brainwash a person with brand awareness that, when he's hungry, the idea of choosing anything other than a Snickers simply doesn't enter his mind. Since we are talking about movies, this occurs in that arena as well, and with many indications of success. The enforcement of the norms is accomplished easily enough: nobody wants to be the one person at the office who didn't see the latest Hollywood crapfest, so all must go. And a certain movie being sufficiently popular often forms a reason in and of itself for seeing it. We, as a nation, do obsess over box office results, after all. Liking something in America is often predicated upon other people liking that very thing. For all the individualism in American society there is also a terrible fear of being left out of the crowd. That is why, with all apologies to baseball, conformity is the true American pastime.
One might wonder why this is, but the answer is quite simple. An Englishman, or a German, or a Frenchman has a definite culture and history. It is part of what gives his existence meaning, it is part of his identity. Sure, such notions of identity might be confining and cumbersome, but people of those particular nationalities will always have those things that they can always fall back on, buried deep inside their consciousness. With Americans, though, no such culture exists. Because of our status as a nation of immigrants, most Americans believe (with some justification) that the story they learn in the history books is not their own story. And our culture is an amalgamation of many different cultures, which is to say that there isn't one definitive American experience that has been handed down, generation by generation, for decades. We are constantly in a state of civil war in our culture, always quick to eschew the past (for the aforementioned reasons) in favor of the latest trend, the lastest fad. It is quite ironic: all the hand-wringing about what it means to be an American is all beside the point because, at the bottom of the thing, being an American has no meaning. We have to construct our own culture because no satisfactory one exists. That is both the greatest triumph and the greatest tragedy of America.
