Initial Response: Utopia Achieved

"America ducks the question of origins..."
I've been reading Lies my Teacher Told Me. I've learned from that book that America affectivelyl defines its history with a few bullshit lines about how great things were. I disagree when he says we have no past and no founding truth; we have one, it's just a distorted one (some notion similar to: George Washington and some other rich white guys were just sick of all the oppression so they decided to make their own slave state to stop the evil British fascists and love freedom forever).
That said, I hate generalizations, and this guy uses about 10 per sentenece. So many I wonder if he has the audacity to sum up te universe in a paragraph like so many ridiculous philosophers. I hate this lack of focus on individuals, ignoring the exceptions, because as people liks this often say: "there are always exceptions to the rule." A strange phrase, because it is used to ignore something because it is constant, omnipresent, as the phrase itself claims. Why ignore something that is always there? Either way, these people steer themselves off topic by summarizing cultures, histories, events, governments, and people in one sentence. These people are idiots <--irony.
Maybe its sa cultuar dissimilarity, but I find it hard to accept his point. How is it remotely possible for America to have a "zero culture"? We go to shops, Wal-Marts, whatever. There is culture there. Sterilized, corporate culture is still culture. To say we have no culture is a great insult.
I think he's doing more of a persuasive essay here, because he rarely speaks of any of contrary points and only briefly acknowledges them.
One part, early in the book, page 111 I think...when he says Americans negated colonialism, shows a slighted understanding of American history, which is rife with colonialism.
Also, when they say Why America was created was because we wanted to escape from history" is a little ridiculous, and my friends often accuse me of being too abstract. There's no psychoanalysis necessary to figure out why they made America. It's a large "unclaimed" (save the locals) area full of natural resources. That's keeping in mind largely Maslo's heirerarchy.
I chuckled when he said Europe owns surrealism. They can have it. He's right about one thing, if he's to exemplify the collective thought of Europe, they are outdated in their thinking. But I won't say that because I loathe such generalizations (I believe I mentioned that).
I do like the little bit about statistics, but that doesn't do much to redeem the piece.
One clue to why this piece sucked, may be when he dates the piece to the Reagan administration era, when people may have actually believed this crap about America (probably even more likely for a non-America to fall for it).
I got so bored in the middle of the essay I breezed through like three pages without realizing what I was reading. Then it ended...thankfully.