What does America even represent at this point

Halbhh said:

I consider my self American, but not first, and I don't essentially rely on this... Not ultimately.

Why?

First -- I'm Christian. This is what I rely on.

John 15:19 If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.

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Kentonio said:

It used to be, and it still represents an attractive proposition for a lot of people, particularly from the second and third world. For Europeans however, the glamour has faded a lot in recent decades. When I was a kid most teenagers would have loved to move to America. Now it’s a lot, lot less. Bush and now Trump along with the wide spread of information via the internet has shown people a lot of the dark side, especially after the wars in Iraq.

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iluvatar5150 said:

IME, that's imagined as much as anything. I'm not going to say that it doesn't exist, but it's mostly propaganda used by people in non-urban areas to build their own followings and consolidate their own power. In reality, it doesn't comport with the way people on the coasts actually think - beyond being frustrated at some of your political ideas, most of us just don't really care one way or another. But the real fallacy baked into that message is that we on the coasts don't know anybody from these non-urban, non-coastal areas and that your culture is entirely foreign to us. It just isn't true. Yeah, some of us grew up in big cities, but a lot of us are transplants who moved here for work. For example, just in my church community group (in Baltimore City), there's me and another guy who both grew up in the rust belt region of central/western NY, a post-doc from a farm in eastern Washington, a grad student and his wife from middle-of-nowhere Kentucky, an undergrad from a huge farm in Oklahoma, a grad student and her husband from Montana, and a social worker from South Carolina. At my last church in the middle of Cambridge, MA, there were so many people from Oklahoma it became sort of a running joke.



That's got nothing to do with culture and everything to do with money. Those groups both pay the full sticker price and don't dip into the school's financial aid pool.



No, I don't personally feel like that - mainly because identities of that sort don't really appeal to me - but I also don't discount what you're saying. Part of the issue is that the celebration of "American" culture carries with it a lot of baggage - throughout history, that celebration and that identity has very often been defined by who it excludes rather than just who it includes, so today, even the most well-meaning, non-racist person is going to draw some raised eyebrows when they start heading down that path. Part of it is also the fact that America is pretty new. Most other cultures have had millenia to develop - often in relative isolation (which is where things really become unique); we've had a couple centuries, none of it in isolation. Arguably, a lot of the most uniquely-American elements of our culture have come from the black community: barbecue, jazz, blues, rap.

That said, for someone feeling as you do, there are some encouraging things coming from, all of places, the restaurant industry. My wife and I are kinda-foodies and there's been a big movement in the last few decades to respect and celebrate the unique cultures and ingredients of the different regions within the US. (so much so that if you're a viewer of chef-oriented cooking shows, as we are, it's gotten a bit heavy-handed) A lot of that unique regional flavor (no pun intended) had been sort of washed out in the 20th century partly because so many people treated the fancy European standard as an ideal and partly because it was cheaper for large chains to homogenize everything. But it's now following a somewhat-similar path to music wherein the appreciation of it as an artform has expanded to treat just about every source of influence as worthwhile.

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Kentonio said:

If you learned French you’d be fine in France, it’s a welcoming country. Lots of Americans already here. You’d have to get used to them insulting Trump though, just so you're warned, although that’s true everywhere in Europe.

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dzheremi said:

I try my best to think of America like one big parish of 300+ million people. Like I would in any parish, I consider everyone there my neighbor and my brother/sister, unless or until they decide that they are not. Sure, some people's actions or beliefs may mean that we cannot truly be 'in communion' (in other words, at some basic level we are not as close as we would need to be to be in true union as brothers), but at any rate we both showed up, and who can deny the benefits of attending a liturgy even when you cannot commune? If my Church was holding public liturgies right now (which, thankfully, they are not), you bet I would go even if communion was not an option. I don't think this matches what America represents (I can't say I spend a lot of time thinking about this), but it's what I would like it to represent.

An imperfect analogy to be sure, and definitely pie-in-the-sky thinking, but I like it better than the standard secular 'American dream' idea, which is also pie-in-the-sky thinking. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Jay Sea said:

I live in Australia and have a strong Glasgow accent. I have been here almost half my life and still get asked if I am on holiday. I have been an Australian citizen after being here 3 years, so I am an Australian but I am also Scottish, but more important I am a world citizen and will criticise Australia, Scotland and the UK for injustices against any country or peoples or religious group. That is the right a citizen has to keep the powers in Line. Nations are artificial boundaries for administrative purposes. All mankind is one people so refuse to join the military like the early Christians pre-Constantine.

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