Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Americans have discovered fear.
Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization.
You know Americans are obsessed with life and death and rebirth, that's the American Cycle. You know, awakening, tragic, horrible death and then Phoenix rising from the ashes. That's the American story, again and again.
That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.
We, as Americans, have so much to learn here. We have a shockingly low level of global awareness and familiarity and little idea of how the world sees us. And those disturbing facts keep getting us into a lot of trouble.
America has been a beacon of hope for vulnerable people throughout the world.
The American way of life, as I see it, is really the American way of death. Everything is determined by greed and the insatiable desire to be the richest and most powerful. And that desire is limitless.
I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.
It's scary to me to watch the world around us get less and less physical while in the imaginary world of pop culture, aggressive impulses and fear reactions are floridly, furiously stoked and indulged.
We Americans typically are more positive about our individual futures, which we have some control over, than we are the nation's or the world's, which we see largely through the media prism.
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