Protean Lunatics
I've always been hopelessly American. I'm the guy who went to Europe and, after soaking in the slower, more nuanced approach to daily life and its pleasures, thought it was totally boring. The guy whose nearly-favorite thing to do ever (at least for a long time) was to drive around in a car, park in a parking lot and hang out, then get back in a car and drive around.
The key thing to remember about Americans is that we don't have qualities and characteristics so much as we have tendencies. Tendencies toward restlessness and aimlessness are the big ones. Inattention to detail and a lack of focus are also huge: we can't decide on a great American novel, the American dream is poorly delineated, our culture is characterized by supreme vagueness and our history was never learned. We think these tether-less lives make us infinitely adaptable, able to change into anything and become exactly what we want. Without a past to change from and any coherent ideas of what to change into, we rarely become anything at all. Except more protean, less stable, more restless.
The key thing to remember about Americans is that we don't have qualities and characteristics so much as we have tendencies. Tendencies toward restlessness and aimlessness are the big ones. Inattention to detail and a lack of focus are also huge: we can't decide on a great American novel, the American dream is poorly delineated, our culture is characterized by supreme vagueness and our history was never learned. We think these tether-less lives make us infinitely adaptable, able to change into anything and become exactly what we want. Without a past to change from and any coherent ideas of what to change into, we rarely become anything at all. Except more protean, less stable, more restless.