The American Way: Dream or Nightmare?
"The American Way," or even just the word "American," is at best a slippery concept. Where does one even begin to define a term that can refer to anything relating to this country's people, culture, government, or history? I have lived here my whole life and I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Now that I have established that it would be impossible, I'm going to try anyway.
What we need to recognize from the beginning is that when you talk about a people and their culture, it is necessary to make certain generalizations or else you will spend the rest of your life just trying to determine a starting point, but never actually getting anywhere. I also want to make clear that I believe there are many Americas, all of them separate, but simultaneous. For example, our system of law incorporates state and federal laws, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, police, defendants, victims of crime, voters, lobbyists, etc. To reduce a discussion of such a complex institution to a few generalizations in order to make a larger point might be necessary in this context. To generalize is not to deny the complexity of an issue, but rather to make it more manageable. I want to make this clear to you the reader because what I have begun here could be a lifelong project. It is an illusion that by calling my hypertext essay project "Happiness and the American Way" I have managed to somehow contain or even limit it. As I work, each step that I think I am taking closer to the center of the issue only takes me in another circle around it.