[lbo-talk] Why are the US-ers such assholes?

[Charles Brown]

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The question remains why such attitudes seem to be more widely spread in
this country than elsewhere - to the point that I find it rather difficult
to interact with most white straight males in this country in social
situations.  I tend to hang out with women, gays and foreigners in such
situations, because you are more like to have an intelligent conversation as
opposed to male arrogance and showing off.  My explanation is that it's the
manifestation of petit bourgeois folksiness well documented in literature
(cf. Mark Twain, _Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg_ or Sinclair Lewis,
_Babbitt_; not the mention the immortal HL Mencken).

Wojtek

^^^^^
CB: How about a manifestation of white supremacy, male supremacy and U.S.
chauvinism ?

Petit bourgeois folksiness isn't that arrogant , is it ? Mark Twain had
petit bourgeois folksiness himself.

Babbitt
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Babbitt is a classic novel by the American novelist and playwright Sinclair
Lewis, first published in 1922. It is a satire about American values, and
its main theme is the power of conformity and the vacuity of American life.

The book takes its name from the principal character, George Babbitt, a
middle-aged real estate salesman. He lives a successful life professionally,
but he is unhappy. He lives in a fictional Midwestern town called "Zenith,"
in an unspecified state. Critics say Zenith is loosely based on Cincinnati,
Ohio. Zenith's chief virtue is conformity and its religion is boosterism.
Babbitt gradually becomes disillusioned with his lifestyle and then rebels
against it. However, he eventually finds himself too weak to do so, and
lapses back into conformity by the end of the novel.

One of the historical notes about the book is its use of the political word
"liberal" from Chapter XXVI (26) and following. The book was written not too
long after the project of new liberalism began, and so the term had not yet
congealed in the US as standing for a specific stance of the moderate left
as in the later New Deal. Babbitt takes to the word liberal as literally
meaning "not instantly critical of the left", rather than as an agenda for a
set of social programs, and even though he is a conservative businessman.