America is Process

John A. Kouwenhoven's "What's American about America?"  Pulled together many of the concepts (and authors) that we have explored in AmCon thus far.  I won't take too much time getting into the parts of article that irritated me (insulting the reader by consistently using words like "obviously," making a list of the things he is going to talk about only to say at the end, "I don't have time to talk about this,"  and oversimplifying and even worse- glorifying alienated labor) but will rather focus upon his general thesis about America and my own views as to its validity.  He writes, near the end of the chapter, "Th[e] quality I would define as a concern with process rather than product-or, to re-use Mark Twain's words, a concern with the manner of handling experience or materials rather than with the experience or materials themselves"(10), and, on the last page, "America is process."  While I found his list of American "things" to be rather random (and not at all what I think of when I think of America)  I can see the validity in his point that America is deeply concerned with process.  His writing takes me back to the discussion we had in class after reading Ragtime about whether or not America is a process of dissatisfaction.  Many of us in class agreed that, yes, Americans are constantly dissatisfied, but the nature of that dissatisfaction is mainly a search for something that is better and more progressive.  In some ways, this is what I think John is trying to say in this chapter.  America is always transforming in search of something better.  This can be seen today with arguments over whether or not to cut funding for lots of Medicare, or whether or not it is "American" to create universal healthcare, or how much the government should do to keep businesses and other nations from going bankrupt.   The values, and the processes we go through to uphold them are constantly changing, and come into conflict with others' views of what America is supposed to be.   Yet the process is there, despite the resistance, serving as tension to the changes which are always, sometimes subtly, and sometimes dramatically, taking place.  Personally, when I think of America, I do not think of skyscrapers or of jazz.  I don't like skyscrapers or Jazz.  Really.  Not at all, and as I like America, for what it is worth, I would prefer not to think of us as a tall, overly shiny building or as a cacophony passing as music.   But I have always had the image of America as a beautiful sort of teetering-on-the-edge-of-chaos.   More specifically, as that one friend (that most people have)  who is slightly scatterbrained, slightly all over the place, and somewhat inappropriate, yet nevertheless the sort of person people want as a friend.   Partially because he/she is interesting, and partially because he/she is fun, and partially because you never know what they are going to do and don't really want to be on the wrong side of any sort of emotional breakdown.  This may well be my little America-centered self glamorizing us.  But also, I definitely see it as messy, and, as viewed as a person, America still makes sense in terms of Kouwenhoven's writing.  A person is never complete, and is always changing, always trying to define his/herself, and always trying to reconcile the past with what they see themselves as now, what others see themselves as, and what they want to be.   In that sense, I have to agree.  America is process, and it is the lack of finality that makes it interesting and worthwhile.