American concerns and ambivalence

This comes from a book titled "American Myth American Reality" that I picked up for 15 cents at some store 30 years ago. Great thoughts. One of them:


Heroes and heroines are perceived to be set apart from ordinary human beings and at the same time to be models for and explanations of American social life.

[remember, this is written in 1980.]

Americans frequently voice the fear that their world is falling apart. The specter of war threatens either imminent atomic holocaust or continuing Vietnams. There is fear that the wealth and productivity of America may decline or cease to exist. There is great ambivalence among Americans, increasingly conscious and obvious, concerning government of all kinds, the Presidency, the military and defense, and the availability and consumption of American resources.

There are conscious, public discussions of and ambivalence about the fundamental distinctions to be made among human beings and the propriety of such distinctions in American life—distinctions in regard to caste, race, and sex, as well as distinctions between life and death, and human and animal life.