I had a very similar experience. What struck me the most, however, is the discrepancy between the urban cultural images exported abroad (which, I must admit, played a significant role in shaping my perception of this country before coming here), and the actual culture, which is antithetical to urbane - small town petit bourgeois at best, but for the most part stylized rural (as opposed to actual rural).
US nationalism has also a very peculiar flavour. On the one hand it is in-your-face jingoism practised by self-appointed public opinion leaders and asssorted rednecks, fratboys, and college Repugs. On the other hand, however, USers seem to be much more tolerant of all forms of critique of the US as a nation - much more so than the Europeans, Asians or Africans I had contact with.
But this tolerance has an undercurrent - it coexists with the thinly veiled feeling of US superiority as far as standards of living are concerened. This is especially evident when you talk to USers who travel abroad, regardless of their political orientation. It is very likely that they tell you at least one of the following types of stories:
- the toilet paper and towel anecdote - a narrative how difficult it was to obtain some US-style consumer product in the country they visited; - an unfavorable comparison of foreign housing and transportation facilities to those in the US (i.e. "they do not have good freeways as we do", "theis houses are small" - cracking jokes about foreign products (e.g. the Trabant (the East German precurson of the US Saturn) joke).
Of course they miss the fact that other countries may have superior standards of living thanks to their collective arrangement for the production of many goods (e.g. education, health care, transportation, housing).
>
>After living here for thirty eight years, some threads of "identity" have
>emerged: positive ones, like the belief (and ability) that if you try hard
>enough you can tackle anything,
I agree. The 'we all doomed' thinking is much more popular in the Old World, but there are exceptions, especially on the US left.
>the anti-bullshit/muckraking tradition
ditto, but again you can find mucho BS in the so-called cultural elites here.
>and....on the negative side the (often) deadly combination of arrogance
>and ignorance--- the actual pride in being stupid, which I have not
>encountered anywhere else so far.
>
Again, ditto. US is the only country where anti-intellectualism, provincialism and ignorance (but not necessarily plain stupidity) are so widely revered as role models. In the old world, even the most stupid people try to act smart, which often produces comic results, but that is another story.
Also, do not forget US in-your-face religiosity, which is probably one of the most nauseating aspects of the US culture.
And the self-centered tendency to call themselves Americans, even though America consists of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and a host of smaller Spanish speaking countries.
wojtek