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American Discontent in the New Millennium
Crown
August 2008
On Sale: August 5, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0307406628
EAN: 9780307406620
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Americans are as safe, well fed, securely sheltered, long-
lived, free, and healthy as any human beings who have ever
lived on the planet. But we are down on America. So why do
we hate us? According to Dick Meyer, the following items on
this (much abbreviated) list are some of the contributors
to our deep disenchantment with our own culture: Cell-phone talkers broadcasting the intimate details of
their lives in public spaces
Worship of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-
fulfillment
T-shirts that read, “Eat Me”
Facebook, MySpace, and kids being taught to market
themselves
High-level cheating in business and sports
Reality television and the cosmetic surgery boom
Multinational corporations that claim, “We care about you.”
The decline of organic communities
A line of cosmetics called “S.L.U.T.”
The phony red state–blue state divide
The penetration of OmniMarketing into OmniMedia and the
insinuation of both into every facet of our lives You undoubtedly could add to the list with hardly a
moment’s thought. In Why We Hate Us, Meyer absolutely nails
America’s early-twenty-first-century mood disorder. He
points out the most widespread carriers of the why-we-hate-
us germs, including the belligerence of partisan politics
that perverts our democracy, the decline of once common
manners, the vulgarity of Hollywood entertainment, the
superficiality and untrustworthiness of the news media, the
cult of celebrity, and the disappearance of authentic
neighborhoods and voluntary organizations (the kind that
have actual meetings where one can hobnob instead of just
clicking in an online contribution). Meyer argues—with biting wit and observations that make you
want to shout, “Yes! I hate that too!”—that when the
social, spiritual, and political turmoil that followed the
sixties collided with the technological and media
revolution at the turn of the century, something inside us
hit overload. American culture no longer reflects our own
values. As a result, we are now morally and existentially
tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. We hate us
and we wonder why. Why We Hate Us reveals why we do and also offers a
thoughtful and uplifting prescription for breaking out of
our current morass and learning how to hate us less. It is
a penetrating but always accessible Culture of Narcissism
for a new generation, and it carries forward ideas that
resounded with readers in bestsellers such as On Bullshit
and Bowling Alone.
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