[Flint]

coberst! Quick, take my hand--I can lead you out of this maze...I'm a friend! You've got to trust me--there's not much time! :::slap::: Pay attention, man! This is vitally important. You have used the term "American" to define an intellectual class. Explain...think fast! . . . Bzzzt! Wrong! . . . Bzzzt! Wrong! . . . Trick question--there is no valid explanation.

And that's why everything else you have to say will be dead-on-arrival. People will think one of two things, #1 you're a self-loathing American who projects the microcosm of your experience upon the canvas which occupies your field of vision, ie.e the surface area inside your own borders (Herman Hesse was raised in the culture that gave us [Godwin deleted] but he didn't obsess on German intellectual inferiority in his novels) ; or #2 you're an America-hating European who uses America as a boogey-man for everything that's wrong with the world.

I don't think that either one of those positions describes where you're coming from--but it doesn't matter, because when you go throwing around "Americans this" and "Americans that" it sets off a red flag. Everybody knows that there are problems in modern society, just as there are problems in every society; and America being one of both of the above, it is going to have problems. Is that due to a magical force-field that renders American people a hive-mind philosophy? I might agree with that, except I'm an American! In order to posit that theory, I have to make the assumption of my own unique qualities.

And the point is that I can't logically attribute to myself a quality which renders me capable of analyzing the culture (global human culture) of which I am a part without admitting that I am a part of it. See? I'm here to make you conscious of important ideas. Oh, wait. Now it seems like I'm a pompous ass, and I'm calling you a fool. Hmmm. Well, I'm sure when you do it, it's different. After all, I'm just a loathesome American.