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/lit/ - Literature

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812416 No.812416 [Reply] [Original]

ITT: The most American things you can think of.

Cultural things. Things America has given to the world; Political thought. Inventions. Ways of living. The best and worst people America has spawned. Anything, as long as it's American.

I'm going to write an essay on the best choice.

>> No.812419

BTW, I'm not American.

>> No.812420

/lit/ - your /int/ homework

>> No.812423

>>812420

I'm 23. I have no homework.

>> No.812424

Definitely not proper education if you've been reduced to this.

>> No.812426

War on terror

>> No.812430

Benjamin Franklin is everything good about America past or present embodied in one person.

>> No.812434

Apple pie

>> No.812435

Mass produced automobiles.

>> No.812442

fast food

>> No.812443

>>812435

Ah, good. Fordism.

>> No.812449

John Steinbeck

>> No.812452

ignorance

>> No.812456
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812456

freedom

>> No.812463

neoliberalism

>> No.812469

MASS PRODUCED AUTOMOBILES MADE OF APPLE PIE

>> No.812493

Imperialism

>> No.812495

Have all the trolls left?

Can I get some other good answers now. There have been one or two.

>> No.812503
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812503

sugar plums and rainbow

>> No.812509

Secret gay sex.

>> No.812512

jokes about Canada

>> No.812515

>>812509
Europe was definitely beating us on that for hundreds of years man.

>> No.812516

Jazz.

>> No.812519

>>812430
French whores?

>> No.812522

I was thinking American centric thought is something pretty native to only ourselves. Most of the rest of the (developed) world is aware of each others' histories and cultures, but Americans in a general sense receive little of this, at least not in a cultural information sense.

>> No.812552

mcdonalds

>> No.812556

Ayn Rand is the personification of everything that america represents. She really is american values personified. If you believe she is an amazing visionary, you probably love the ideals of america in every way. If you think she is terrible and everything that is wrong with the world, you probably hate what america stands for. Personally I am in the latter camp. American here.

>> No.812568

An over-zealous love of flags.

>> No.812594

>>812556

I'm in the latter camp too, however I only hate what the American government exports to the world. i.e. trash culture, war and consumerism. I happen to like American people.

>> No.812608

>>812594

and we like you, you fucking asshole. =)

>> No.812613

>>812608
Obviously not all of you. But the ones with enough discourse of reason.

>> No.812656

>>812613

I'll discourse YOUR reason, you pinko fuckhead!

>> No.812698

>>812656

Die

>> No.812706

America gave us Jazz music, the Martini, Mass Production, and superhero comic books.

>> No.812723

Coca Cola. Pragmatism.

>> No.812726

>>812594
Good to hear. ^_^
You see, we Americans hate our leaders as much as the rest of the world does...

>> No.812731

The filth of Christianity taking control. This is also found in Italy.

>> No.812732

Thoreau

>> No.812734
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812734

Levittown.

>> No.812737

The best American Idea: Steal the culture of everyone, throw out what you don't like.

>> No.812738

Best American Idea that we never really followed up on: Destroying the worlds aristocracy.

>> No.812740

>>812737

The Romans did that too.

>> No.812742

>>812737
Hail to the Amerifag Empire!

>> No.812746

>>812740

So my country will eventually become a badass militaristic empire. I can't wait! *_*

>> No.812751

Baseball, Texas, Teddy Roosevelt, Yellowstone, DC, George Washington, "Soccer" (as in how no one in America considers it a sport wtf), James Madison, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Hollywood

>> No.812756

>>812751

I am a American and I consider it a sport...

>> No.812758

>>812746

It will also fall and have/had shitty rulers like Caligula.

>> No.812761

>>812756
>Not that I have family in the UK.

>> No.812764

>>812756
We are alone in this crazy country then

>> No.812773

>>812758

Meh, the moment of Imperial might is worth it...

>> No.812777

>>812761
>Note
fixed

>> No.812786

Sure is /int/ here.

>> No.812794

John Steinbeck.

>> No.812802

Waking up and going to work at sun rise. That's Ben Franklin, the bastard.

>> No.812810
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812810

Issac Motherfucking Asimov!

>> No.812814

Edison
Tesla
Einstein
the atomic bomb guy

>> No.812818

>>812516
>>812516
>>812516
>>812516
>>812516

>> No.812823

James Dean, Rock and/or Roll

>> No.812824

mormonism

>> No.812828

>>812758

We're only just beginning.

>> No.812829

Christianity

>> No.812831

>>812824
That is by far, one of the worst things America has given birth to!

>> No.812840

>>812831
not sure if serious...

>> No.812846

>>812829
That diffidently on the "worst of," section!

>> No.812847

Elvis Presley, Woodstock

>> No.812853

pretty much everything new and original since 1880.

>> No.812855

>>812840


These >>812846 , >>812831 are both very, very ,very, VERY serious...

>> No.812867
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812867

The internet!

>> No.812876

>>812847

Anyone been to Woodstock lately? It's a shit-hole of a tourist trap. Way to go hippie fucksticks, way to turn into everything you were rebelling against.

>> No.812902

bump

>> No.812932

>>812876
it's been this way for decades. america is pros at taking intellectual/cultural movements and distilling them down to a product.

>> No.812949

>>812932

Guy Debord called it 'recuperation'

>> No.812958

>>812949
word, ken knabb is a pretty cool guy.

>> No.812967

>>812932

Yes, only the shops are run by a bunch of sixty year olds who couldn't adjust to the real world and are still trying to live out their hippie fantasies.

The men there are jokes and the chicks are a bunch of cat ladies with tie-die dresses and peace sign bandannas covering their grey hair.

>> No.812979

>>812967
aka suny new platz grads

>> No.812999

>>812958

Have you met him?? He's a personal hero.

>> No.813053

>>812999
nah, i just spent hours back in high school reading practically every situationist thing he translated. study hall computer access ftw.

>> No.813074

the endless appeals process

>> No.813093

1911

>> No.813097

alvin greene

>> No.813108

Illusion of freedom.

>> No.813114

>>812416
The name Chuck Steak

>> No.813118

White People

>> No.813120
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813120

You know what's crazily American? Self loathing. Americans hate themselves. It's been that way pretty much since this country started (Alexander De Tocqueville commented on that when he wrote Democracy in America). We are very acutely aware of all of the shit that we've done, and we feel fucking terrible about it.

>> No.813123

>>813108
Freedom to be a White Man.

>> No.813133
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813133

Boston Terrier

>> No.813138
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813138

Minimalism?

>> No.813161
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813161

"The Happiest Place on Earth."

>> No.813163

The nuclear bomb

>> No.813167

It's not easy to describe...

The US is a strange place indeed. It's technically little more than a slave camp, but a very high-class one, and this combined with the unconditional patriotism that is pretty much the only culture of the place means that people aren't even aware of their conditions (in fact they're actually proud).

Really, it's almost absurd. You've got the middle class working their asses off and managing to save maybe 5000 dollars a year for their entertainment, while the people that they work for spend more than that on entertainment every *day*.

When I think of the US, the basic thought that forms in my head is the concept of a place where the filthy rich get filthier/richer off the work of oblivious drones.

Of course, given its sheer size, a lot of good stuff has managed to surface among the piles of refuse too. You gotta give them that.

>> No.813173
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813173

Write a paper purely about the life of Charles Manson.

>> No.813184
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813184

Hollywood.

It doesn't get more purely American.

>> No.813196

>>813167

>The US is a strange place indeed. It's technically little more than a slave camp

The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

>> No.813210

>>812732
Seconded.

>> No.813211

>>813196
Hah. I never saw it quite that way before, but it's a great observation.

So there! Ultimately, the US is all about slavery.

...wow, that's depressing.

>> No.813215

Communism.

>> No.813226

>>813211
Please don't give him credit. That is a stupid observation, and wrong. I bet you liked the movie Zeitgeist too.

>> No.813238

>>813211

The hilarious part is that if you ask any current American what they love about America, they'll tell you, "FREEDOMS!"

-What- freedom, exactly...?

>> No.813255

>>813226

>That is a stupid observation, and wrong.


Brilliant refutation! You sure presented a well-thought out opposing argument with lots of sources and citations!

>> No.813257

>>812416
A Bible and a gun.

>> No.813261

>>813226
It has a little merit. We work more than any other country yet our wealth is comparable to most other Western societies. A good amount of our economic system is built on the idea that things are so expensive that we have to buy money we don't have. We have the freedom to lie to consumers in order to get them to buy products but we lack the freedom to form a tax-payer supported consumer advocacy committee.

I don't know, sounds like slavery to me.

>> No.813280

>>812430

No; Thomas Jefferson. The last rational President, and one of the greatest anti-theists of US history.

>> No.813282

>>813261

WAGE slavery!

>> No.813295

>>812556

Disagreed. I proudly embrace American ideals, including individualism and capitalism (more or less), but despise Rand's writings, her work and her beliefs.

>> No.813303

>>813255
You're right. I'm sorry I didn't approach the situation with enough respect for you to explain what I meant.

The idea that America is a slave colony seems childish and narrow minded to me. How about the fact that the trend in the United States has been overwhelmingly towards creating more social programs that help the poor? Or how about the fact that there are millions of people in this country that are living off the grid in one form or another. How about the fact that I, as a 21 year old, am living a very comfortable life without working any job? My mom is a homemaker, and my dad works as an engineer, which he loves. I get to live at home while I'm preparing to go to graduate school. What about that says slavery to you?

>> No.813305

>>813167

From this post its obvious that you're a angsty manchild who has gone nowhere outside the U.S. and loved sucking Obama's cock up until he became president.

>> No.813308

>>813280
We live with the working idea that Jeffersonian Democracy works, that the individual is indeed rational and can be trusted to make informed decisions.

I can't say how wrong this tenet has come to be.

>> No.813311

>>813305

>From this post its obvious

You're done, get out.

>> No.813316

Hunter S. Thompson

>> No.813321

>>813311
God, Arcade Bumstead, if you lost your tripcode you wouldn't be intolerable.

>> No.813325

>>813308

You cannot look at American history past the mid-1800s and tell me, with a straight face, that America has embraced Jeffersonianism. Hamilton won by a long shot, Republican or Democrat.

Now it is more or less true that Jefferson's vision is obsolete in an industrial age, but that does not mean his ideals are wrong, nor does it mean Hamilton was right.

>> No.813332

>>813325
>Jeffersonianism

What?

>> No.813339

>>813332

Middle school civics vocabulary; look it up.

>> No.813353

>>813303
I post a jingoistic and trite insult, and people pay attention. Then I post a full, apologetic and earnest response, and I'm ignored. I forget how depressing it is to talk to people on the Internet.

>> No.813357

>>813325
Perhaps our government system currently doesn't reflect this, but we work with the assumption culturally that individuals are rational agents. If I remember correctly, this is a core of Jeffersonian Democracy. I may be wrong, though.

>> No.813362
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813362

Longest standing Federal Constitutional Republic

Manifest Destiny

Neo-Conservatism

The assembly line

to name a few

>> No.813369

>>813357

No, that seems about correct. I'd agree that the government tends to be anti-Jeffersonian, whilst the culture seems to live by the Jeffersonian myth.

Interestingly enough, today we see the conservatives co-opting a once-revolutionary ideal and turning it into everything Jefferson stood against.

>> No.813380

>>813303
Like I said, high-class slave camp.

How does it make you feel to know that some asshole who doesn't work half as much as your father spends more than your father's entire yearly salary in a day, on disgustingly frivolous things?

I'm never said that your living conditions are bad, just that most of your efforts go to enrich people who are already filthy rich while in the meantime, your education system is garbage.

The way the US function disgusts me, but nowhere near as much as I am disgusted to see that the people living in 'em are among the most patriotic on the planet. It's just absurd.

>> No.813408
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813408

>>813380

Are you seriously implying people in Russia or Britain or Japan have it any better?

You seem to have absolutely no knowledge of the outside world, just time spent being pissed off and angsty at the U.S. as some childish form of rebellion.

>> No.813409

>>813380

Feels good man. You adolescent angst is delicous. You better calm down or you'll have an asthma attack.

>> No.813427

>>813380

The difficulty by which one labours does not entitle him to property--or rather, it is not the only thing that does. To show hostility to the employer-capitalist system (the bourgeois) is to show hostility to the very idea of honoring private contracts, private enterprise, and by that extension, to the very idea of the individual as a private person.

It might seem unfair that the rich owner controls the capital and means of production, but that is neither nor there, anymore than it may seem unfair that some are fat and some are fit (note how the analogy entails both hereditary and personal influence).

To complain about the wage disparity is to complain about individual liberty itself. I'm no jingoistic conservative (I rather hold many of Marx's views in high regard), nor am I some wannabe proletariat dreamer.

As an aside, America's university-level education system is among the best in the world. So we have plenty of dumbasses but the ceilings are high.

>> No.813430

>>813380
You know, it genuinely doesn't bother me that rich people buy stupid things. Still, I guess I can see why that fact is an offensive one, at least to a lot of people. But a disparity in income does not equal slave camp.

Your argument, as I understand it, is that people have to work incredibly hard for their wealth, and that's a bad thing because it creates wage slavery. Of course, that argument neatly ignores all of the people that don't have to work incredibly hard to get by. Rich people fall in that category, and you seem to be saying that people with wealth are automatically part of the problem. You ignored my comment about people who just don't buy into the capitalist/consumerist system, so I'm not really sure what you explain them.

But what I really don't understand is the alternative you see for hard work. Things always come at a price. At every level of civilization and society, you have to work for what you want. How is this modern version of working for a living so different that it constitutes slavery?

>> No.813433

>>813408
Its the exact same in Russia, Britain, and Japan. The fact that the United States revels in it as a core tenet of its culture is what bothers some.

>> No.813439

>>813369
I always wonder what Jefferson would say if he knew what America would be like. He'd probably rethink writing the Constitution if he knew.

>> No.813447

>>813439
He owned slaves and fucked them without freeing them. Who the fuck cares what he thought?

>> No.813456

>>813447
Thomas Jefferson was, by far, the greatest of the founding fathers.

>> No.813462

>>813447

We all have our quirks.

>> No.813465

>>813447
Everyone owned slaves with the knowledge that it was a necessary evil. It was only right before the Civil War did people (read: Southerners) start rethinking that slavery was a necessary evil.

Jefferson's ideas were interesting for his time, but built on outdated Romantic assumptions.

>> No.813473

Chauvinism.
Definitely not the best but by far the most accurate.

>> No.813479

>>813408
No. I'm saying your country is *capable* of great things and everyone in it *could* be considered very wealthy by international standards, and yet you waste half of your money on trash masquerading as human beings.

>>813427
It's degenerated far beyond that. The sheer absurdity of the difference makes the word "disparity" a laughable understatement. And it doesn't stop there. Through lobbying, companies modify laws so that they can extract more money from the people, then the power shifts even more in their favor, allowing them to further impose their will on the system. It won't end until most people *are* slaves, enduring awful living conditions. Don't think that they wouldn't tax breathable air if they couldn't, and they eventually will.

I wish the quality of education could be defined by its ceiling, but again, a privileged few enjoy excellent education while most people are left incredibly ignorant. You put a man on the moon many decades ago, but 15% of US citizens can't find their own country (as huge as it is) on a world map. 60% don't know or believe about evolution, while even random farmers knew about it hundreds of years ago.

If the US were a fantasy setting, everyone would dismiss it as "far too improbable".

>> No.813513

The American frontier/rugged individualism/self determination

America's consistent progressivism throughout history (reached an unfortunate roadblock now)

The idea of the small American suburban town, where everyone knows each other, how the football team is doing this year, etc. (and this isn't just texas towns of under 10,000 people)

>> No.814628

>>813479
Any advice on where I should move? >.< I am considering the UK--since I have family there.

>> No.814647

Ignorance as a lifestyle choice.

>> No.814654

Down with all nations, communities, and anarchy!

>> No.814662

Extreme individualism.

>> No.814683

>>814654
This anon is right!

>> No.815400

>>813295
Your probably a christfag then, and America was founded with freedom of religion as one of its tenants. Christianity vs freedom of religion. Perhaps ronald raegan represents american values best. The question you have to ask yourself is are you referring to the historic american ideal or what it has become. Ayn rand is way to anti christian to represent america perfectly. Mix ayn rand with jerry fallwell and you have america.