Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:20am
By Ellis Mnyandu
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - In a critical look at how the United States has changed since the end of World War Two, author John Strausbaugh in a new book argues that the country has grown fat, lazy and pampered.
Even as he hails progress signified by such iconic American inventions as the iPod, Strausbaugh rails about the loss of the nation's pioneering spirit.
"Sissy Nation -- How America Became a Culture of Wimps & Stoopits," is partly a call to action and tells of a country that he believes is in cultural dire straits.
According to Strausbaugh overmedicating, ignorance and a retreat into virtual reality, are just some of the predicaments that the United States will have to overcome.
The 56-year-old author spoke to Reuters about his writing and authors who have influenced him.
Q: How do you explain your latest work?
A: "Obviously it's a rant, a satirical rant but I think a pretty accurate one about where we are as a culture. We've become a sissy culture.
"As I was writing it I pictured myself standing in front of a crowd ranting at them for an hour. I wrote it in that vein. It's much quicker, shorter. It doesn't delve into much history. Obviously, sissies don't like long, thick books."
Q: Could you please define sissiness?
A: "I don't mean it in the old stereotype of the manly man versus the girly man, or the gay man versus a straight man, or even men versus women. I'm not calling any specific person a sissy. I'm talking about our culture a whole.
"Americans used to be known around the world as bold, brash, take-charge, don't tread-on-me pioneers, explorers, inventors, entrepreneurs. I think we've slid a long way from all of that to become this soft, bad, scared, over-indulging, decadent culture that we are now."
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