I just wrote the longest entry and it got deleted. I hate these things. I will try to recover what I have lost....

 My culture is big. Go big or go home. Big servings, big cars, big farms, big people, big tanks. Most of all, big dreams. Big dreams of the frontier, of being self made, of achieving massive amounts of wealth all because of hard work. The facts which back up these dreams are usually based on race and gender, among other, privileges. But still, these (impossible) possibilities are what drive our rationale for the way our country is run from social welfare to health care to homeless people to minorities. " Why don't they stop drinking/stop having babies/get an education, and get a job!" we say.

My culture is obsessed with efficiency, married to order, and lusting for perfection. As such, wasting time is a sin. We have street signs and numbers on our buildings, maps in the TTC, all so that we can always be on time, never be confused, and most of all, never have an excuse of why we did not do what we were supposed to do. If you didn't have enough time, you should have planned better. If you got lost, you should have looked it up before you left. If your mom died, you should stop having feelings. My culture does not believe in taking your time to enjoy a meal, or coffee in the morning, or siestas in the afternoon. It does, however, love punishment. In the beginning of 2008, 1 in 100 adults in America were incarcerated. If other people, with the same opportunities, didn't commit crimes (or didn't caught, or had enough money to buy their way out of it), why couldn't you? INTO THE SLAMMAH!

In the upper class of the northeastern United States, we believe in the power of the consumer to make the world a better place. We insist on buying fair trade coffee and organic field greens and milk. I will judge you if you willingly drink non-fair trade coffee, more so if you consciously decide that it is too expensive, and even more so if you eat McDonalds. Why don't you just punch babies and put arsenic in the drinking water?

My culture is not afraid of conflict and anger. From the "splendid little wars" to the race conflicts, to the dysfunctional family next door, we eat it up. We won't go see a film unless it is shown to us in the trailer that there is sufficient explosions and deaths. Especially if it is one of the many which exploit our national tragedies for the wealth of a few major production companies. And yes, sometimes the conflict is good; the conflict in Burmingham, Alabama that led to the rise of civil rights, the women who were beaten senseless outside the white house that led to women's rights. Conflict is both necessary for the progress of our culture, and it's fun to watch, too.

Finally, for every culture that is dominant, there is a subversive one boiling beneath it, spitting in its face and poking fun at its values. And when that one gets its place, finally, as the dominant culture, there is another in the gutters waiting to rise up.