The American Thing

There’s something almost primal about the impulse to mock America. Before language, before tools, before we figured out fire, some ancestor was already sitting around complaining about whatever the American equivalent was back then—the fat, the excess, the inexplicable confidence, the way they’ll invade anyone for any reason. It’s a hobby that runs deep.

But here’s the thing: you can’t actually hate America, not when it’s given the world hot dogs and Halloween and the entire mythology of becoming something from nothing. Lindsay Lohan. Clint Eastwood. The promise that you could go from washing dishes to a million bucks in a few days if you believed hard enough and got lucky. It’s absurd and seductive in equal measure.

I think about this contradiction a lot. The way America manages to be both genuinely appalling and genuinely lovable, sometimes in the same breath. The violence, the stupidity, the sheer size of its appetites—and then somehow also the source of most of what makes modern life worth paying attention to. Music, film, the particular kind of dumb optimism that invents new things instead of just maintaining what exists.

So you end up in this permanent state with American culture: rolling your eyes while absorbing everything it touches. Cynical about it. Attracted to it anyway. And that’s where you sit, knowing full well that your irony doesn’t actually protect you from caring about any of it.