If America is falling apart it is because having a culture and society is fundamentally at odds with capitalism, in which people are nothing more than resources, cogs in the capitalist machine. Instead of a real culture, we have cultural products which are sold for money. Our culture, essentially, is money. And this creates tremendous alienation, naturally, between people and any idea of a 'nation'. This tension has always been around, but it is becoming more intense as capitalism pervades American life more and more thoroughly.
Hence, people easily buy into bread and circuses such as "culture wars" and partisan politics that serve to keep the masses divided over issues that have the illusion of deep meaning but are actually relatively low stakes and non-threatening to the status quo. External adversaries like China are needed to give people a sense of meaning and struggle that would otherwise be missing. In the meantime, the capitalism system continues on and the rich and powerful become more rich and powerful, while everyone else fights over the scraps.
Agree that USA’s “social cohesion” is the aspiration of better opportunities and quality of life (all related to money as you say) instead of one unified culture that binds people together. Which eventually is way more of an individual aspiration and inspiration than a collective one.
I don’t think US lacks culture though, it’s more that it’s widely segregated between different bubbles and that creates different and separated “Americas” depending on which cultural bubble you’re inserted in.
Very different from Brazil/LatAm logic where we get all these different influences too characteristic of immigrant countries but we smash and crack them all, then mix it all together in the same soup to form something inherently Brazilian and one single national culture idea that all can identify with regardless of their background.
That’s why for instance, all Brazilians can have fun with the Portuguese when complaining about colonization and gold robbery even if they’re descendants of these same colonizers, as they will still feel more inherently culturally connected to Brazil and the “mixed multicultural idea” it represents and that they were inserted in from the moment they were born.
Carnaval and Samba for instance, has influences of all of Portuguese, Indigenous and African cultures while still not being really any of those.
“Macunaíma”, a classic from Brazilian literature we have to read during school classes that later became a movie, is about trying to characterize an unified Brazilian identity through its protagonist who is an Indigenous man that is born Black and becomes White, everything all together at same time. Something that under US cultural lenses, I imagine it would sound very offensive. External cultural influences are massively brought in, consumed and reinterpreted through national lenses to create its own “Brazilian version”.
When watching US cultural products, it’s much harder for me to get what is the sense of what’s really being an American to you guys. Because it’s like it’s something very different from each person, the one common trope usually repeated is the “freedom” discourse that is related to both economics (neoliberal capitalism = you can get whatever you want) and social behavior (social liberalism = you can do and be whatever you want) but that seems way more directed to individual goals as I said than something that makes you feel connected to your neighbor under the same cultural umbrella.
But all this is more related to US foundation and history of segregation (as it was colonized by the British, inheriting their perspective) more than necessarily tied with Capitalism and its complications tbh, which is something present everywhere. I believe the excessive focus on Capitalism as a mantra for national pride may have been simply a way to fabricate a narrative to try to glue in people who are looking for the same goals and need each other for it, compensating the lack of that unified cultural glue while also stimulating a national narrative that is based on the idea of production and individual prospering.
