Before reading any reader comments, i was impressed by the piece as a sober, non-polemical setting down of what the author saw and experienced in the USA. I think his report is accurate and all the stronger for its quiet sober tone.

Of course not all Americans are like this. There are islands of old-fashioned grace and civilisation, as we understand it, in the northeast - anywhere north and north-west of New York - and in the northwest - Oregon, Washington state, Northern California. And of course well-educated elite Americans rise above this - but as one correspondent said , what is described here is the mass-culture average-citizen reality in which these elites have to make careers. It is a fair assessment. The American friends I have - I lived there for three years in the 1970s - would not differ with these judgements. That does not make them, or the author, or me, anti-American.

The more important question for we Australians is - how different are we from what is described here? My answer is, not as different as we might like to think - and we risk getting more like this all the time. Take three examples: diets and obesity, the use by the military of sport-related public spectacle to make itself better liked by the general public, the loss of empathy with and knowledge of neighbouring cultures and languages. Is pot calling kettle black?

I think the hispanisation of the USA is the USA's best hope of overcoming isolationism and selfishness. Hispanic-origin citizens' morale is high despite their relative poverty. Hispanics have more empathy with poor and developing countries - obviously. Their Catholicism gives them hope of holding to a more universalist less self-centred world view. How will a minority of this huge size change the USA? I hope, quite a lot.

I travelled overseas recently too and have witnessed the "ugly American" tourists first hand. You can hear them coming long before you see them.

However, to be fair, I encountered people from other cultures just as sterotypical and most of the Americans I met were charming, considerate and respectful of their hosts.

However, as far as their level of education is concerned, it's all going to plan.

JD Rockefeller helped design the modern US Education System and the philosophy was that he wanted a "nation of workers, not thinkers".

http://www.hermes-press.com/education_index.htm

Most US citizens get their information fed to them from TV and we are heading the same way.

So you found collective American mentality to be narcissistic? - no surprise to many.
It is very infantile yet this American narcissism- recklessly masquerades as the universal authority on everything.

Pericles - naturally I can't speak for anyone else but my dismay at the parochialism of so many Americans stems from the fact that these values and attitudes are now the ones that are being proselytised at the point of a gun.

Yes, of course your average belly-at-the-bar exhibits the same tendencies to insularism - he/she mainly formed a worldview from t.v. and movies. The majority of which were American. Also, he/she does not hold the opinion that they have a mandate from God to go out and bring the good news of ockerism to the rest of the world.

This limited world view of which the author speaks could be regarded as risible - if it hadn't become so serious. The last week has brought what can only be described as schoolyard tantrums regarding China's military spending (one tenth of what the US has spent in the last four years EXCLUDING what has been spent in the Middle East) and now rocket bases in Europe "to ensure peace".

However when these schoolyard tactics are formulated in the offices of the most powerful nation on earth which has spent more than the rest of the world's countries put together on their military, then it seriously compromises the rest of us.

I have carefully considered whether I am racially prejudiced against Americans and can pretty confidently assert that I'm not. Like the peoples of all countries they are a mixed bag. And yeah, per capita we have just as many dim bulbs as they or any other country.

What I guess I am prejudiced against - anywhere - is unheeding Governments run by meglomaniacs (of any race) on power trips that endanger us all.

Have friends in America in Port Clinton, Ohio, where our youngest son stayed with an American family as an exchange student back in the 1960s. My wife and I also stayed with them for a while. Found the family very gracious and friendly, and have exchanged yearly greetings with the parents until both passed away in the last couple of years.

Will say, however, they were never inclined to question us much about Australia while we were over there, but did not decline to let us know all about God's Own Country, which compared to boorish dryish Aussie Land, guess one can understand how proud they are shown by the Stars and Stripes woven into their front doormats.

Yep, they are a bit different to us, and I guess with such a womderful country they've got and with them now allowed to get as powerful as they want, with all other countries not allowed, guess they just don't need to know who or where anybody else is, except maybe for terrorists.

Happy enough away from them these days, anyhow.

I am an American and there is a bit of truth in the harsh criticisms of my country. Much of what I've read, however, no more accurately reflects the United States as a whole than does Crocodile Dundee represent Australia. Some of us actually know that Melbourne is in the south of Australia, that Tasmania is an island that has mountains and cold weather and that the seasons in the southern hemisphere are reversed from ours in the U.S.!

But remember that the United States is a large country with tremendous diversity in all aspects among its many inhabitants. I will not try to correct the many errors of judgment of the writer of "Visions of America" because after all, I have to limit my response to 350 words. While reading his "shallow" article, it appears to me that his travels and ability to interpret what was going on around him was extremely limited. I would guess that he only spent time in Washington, D.C. and Florida and had little comprehension of what was going on even there.