stars and stripes and douchebaggery

^ One of the critical tenets of President Obama's fix for our nation is less
emphasis on reckless consumerism and more focus on education.

No More Hummer Nation | Maureen Dowd, New York Times Opinion

I heard a French scientist on a radio show once explain that Americans would always insist on supersizing things because our “reptilian brain” likes things big. We’re still big, as Norma Desmond said. It’s everything around us that’s collapsing and shrinking.

The Wall Street Journal had an article last week reporting that, now that gas prices have gone back down, almost half a million fuel-frugal small cars are piling up unsold at dealers around the country.

“I don’t think Americans really like small cars,” Beau Boeckmann, a Ford dealer in California, told The Journal. “They drive them when they think they have to, when gas prices are high. But we’re big people, and we like big cars.”

That’s the big nettle we’re grasping. How big do we need to be to still feel American? How big can our national debt grow? How big can our cars be? And how big is our clout abroad these days? Will Michelle’s style in Europe make as big a splash as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s?

The cowboy push by W. and Dick Cheney to be a hyperpower and an empire left America a weakened and tapped-out power, straining to defend its runaway capitalism even as it uneasily adapts to its desperation socialism.

How do we come to terms with the gluttony that exploded our economy and still retain our reptilian American desire for living large? How do we make the pursuit of the American dream a satisfying quest rather than a selfish one?

What Maureen Dowd hints at here is the serious need to re-define what it means to be American. But first thing's first - where the hell did we get the idea that to be American means to own big things? I mean, physically big, literally big, expensively big? Unnecessarily big?

And I also have to ask, how much emphasis do we put on individualism before it spills over into selfish bragging rights and materialistic whoring devoid of larger social considerations and responsibilities? Sure, we as Americans can easily max out our credit cards on the latest gadgetry, fashion, and huge cars, and yet we can't even take care of our unemployed homeless fellow citizens, much less pay our mortgages on time. We even have the gall to brag about keeping our priorities.

I used to think that to be American is to be the best you can be - hardworking, educated, self made, socially responsible, generous, strong, and fierce. But evidently that wasn't enough. Or worse, we hide our shortcomings in those departments by relying on such things as Hummers, large screen HDTVs, and houses whose mortgages far exceed our annual salaries.

It's a classic situation: dazzle them - and ourselves - with the goods as a way to distract from our decided lack of accomplishments in the areas that truly matter. After all, isn't it easier to impress someone with an expensive SUV than having to go to graduate school and earning a masters or a PhD? Wouldn't it be more convenient to wow our friends with the latest iPod or Louis Vuitton bag instead of making them inspired and proud of us for having volunteered at a homeless shelter for the past year?

The pendulum has swung the other way, and swung hard. And yet many of us are still too stupid to come around - being smart, responsible, and thrifty is NOT the latest fashion trend. Instead it is now a necessary way of life, one that was birthed by our recklessness and lack of values in the right places.

Do you know why many items at 7-Eleven cost so much? Convenience. You pay extra for the convenience of being able to do a jaunt to that store at 3 in the morning for a carton of milk, a handful of Slim Jim's, or a Slurpee to satisfy a desire. And that is how we have been behaving. Patience has never been a part of American values, at least in the past century. And because of that we've created the pathetic mess we're now in. Yeah, we're that stupid.

Given our choice to create the current dismal economic situation, we have also now created an opportunity, one that offers possibilities to choose wisely this time - and for all time. A new choice has now emerged, though which one we pick depends on whether we have finally learned our lesson:

Do we choose to be big, or do we choose to be better?