The Americans – barbarians lacking in culture

“No thought, no style whatsoever, no literature, no education. But I must say: I like the ice-cream.” This lack of culture, with which the essayist and critic Logan Pearsall Smith confronted his fellow countrymen, sticks to the number one global power like its famous invention of chewing gum. Similarly blunt was a comment by French journalist and politician Georges Clemenceau made a few years later: “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without having developed a culture in between.” The common stereotypes of the people from the “country of unlimited possibilities” also include that they are superficial, arrogant and prudish and that they are as exaggeratedly patriotic as their body measurements have got out of control thanks to too many hamburgers and donuts and too much Coca-Cola. And their craziest idea is that every US citizen needs a gun in order to protect themselves against hostile powers. For instance, against the terrorists from the “rogue states”, as the US’s most famous cowboy George W. Bush once called some countries from the Near East. What speaks in their favour, however, is their unwavering faith in humankind. The pursuit of happiness is one of the basic rights of every American, and there is probably no-one who has embodied and sold the “Think positive” method more successfully than Dale Carnegie, whose book “How to stop worrying and start living” was translated into 38 languages, selling more than 50 million copies worldwide.

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