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33 of 34 found the following review helpful:
 New breed of human? Apr 22, 2007
By S. Ludanov
I must admit beforehand that this review may be biased by the fact that I was fortunate enough to meet Dr. Sunic in person and listen to his presentation of the book. I bought the book and the next morning decided to browse through it. I could not put it away! It is very well researched and written and it is not just about modern American society, but Western liberal ideology as well. I lived in the Soviet Union under communist regime for 30 years and can easily relate to many issues that Dr. Sunic discusses in "Homo Americanus". In fact, for people who came to the United States from the former communist countries, the similarity between communist ideology and practice and western liberalism is often shocking. The main difference according Dr. Sunic is hard oppression (under communism) vs. soft oppression (in the West). While in Russia and Eastern Europe communists came to power staging bloody revolutions, raise of "Cultural Marxism" in the West was not as dramatic. That is why for many Americans, I think, the statement that Dr. Sunic made in his book that communism failed in the East, because it has succeeded in the West may sound unbelievable but it is well proved in "Homo Americanus". After all both ideologies are based on the same foundation - belief in equality. Is not it ironic that most hideous crimes against humanity were committed in the name of liberty, equality and brotherhood: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot? French Revolution?
Author examines many different topics in the book that led to appearance of a new human creature he dubbed Homo Americanus, who is not surprisingly so similar to Homo Soveticus described by Alexander Zinoviev. I am not going to retell the book here, you just have to read it. For many it may become the eye opener, some will probably hate it, because the views expressed in the book clearly do not belong to "mainstream propaganda" and tolerating dissent is not something that is taught to us under the disguise of "tolerance".
62 of 70 found the following review helpful:
 A flawed effort from a courageous, persecuted historian Mar 16, 2007
By Michael Hoffman
"Revisionist historian"
Dr. Tom Sunic is the scion of a persecuted people (the Croats under the Soviets) and has himself faced persecution for his revisionist views and has weathered this ordeal with courage and determination. I am reluctant to criticize someone with those credentials, but since considerations of pity have no place in historiography, I am duty bound to correct some pernicious myths he is repeating in this book for a new generation. Sunic's association of rabbinic Judaism with the Bible is a serious blunder. Orthodox Judaism nullifies the Old Testament; it is not in any way a Biblical creed.
From the fallacy of an Old Testament rabbinic Judaism, Sunic proceeds to revive the classic -but discredited- thesis that early American Puritan religion was the handmaiden to buccaneer capitalism. As a Protestant creed without a central Vatican issuing directives, Puritans reflected a diversity of theological and economic views, but the consensus of the majority was that free enterprise had to be tempered within Biblical social-justice limits. Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the single most influential American Puritan thinker, was, for example, unalterably opposed to usury and any economic system (like the our contemporary U.S. banking system) based on it.
Sunic tries to draw a link between the old Puritan commoweal of British America and the vicious imperium which fundamentalist Churchianity has fashioned in modern America today. Primary Puritan documents, including sermons, diaries, letters and manuscripts undercuts the degrading statements Sunic makes about the Puritans and their polity, and it is obvious that he has not consulted these original materials. He knows nothing of Puritan resistance to Judaism and is mainly rehashing classic ultramontane fallacies about American history. Students and activists seeking an encounter with a sound revisionist history of America's roots, will be poorly served by the anti-Puritan diatribe in "Homo Americanus."
However, with these points in mind, it should also be noted that Dr. Sunic's book contains a valuable critique of the cultural elites that gnaw at the American body politic, a critique worthy of serious consideration in the evolving debate over American nationalism, territorial integrity and destiny. In surveying the contemporary American scene, Sunic offers a credible challenge to the subversion wrought by neo-con conservatism and predatory capitalism in the 21st century. It is only when he attempts to analyze America's theocratic history in previous centuries, that he stumbles.
36 of 39 found the following review helpful:
Dr. Tom Sunic Knocks Out the Politically Correct Establishment with His Insightful Book, Homo Americanus (The American Man) Jun 30, 2007
By Mark Farrell
In today's politically correct world, very few authors dare to criticize what is wrong with society. Despite the First Amendment, it is often political suicide to realistically recognize what is occurring, and may even cost one's job in some cases, if not more. Dr. Tom Sunic is one of those brilliant and fearless individuals who defies the politically correct ban, and he has written an astounding book that all fans of freedom should take the time to read.
Who is Dr. Tom Sunic, you might ask? He is a man of many talents, whose credentials are impeccable. He obtained his doctorate in political science at the University of California. He is fluent in Croatian, French, and German, and has had articles published in various publications in these languages, as well as several books. He has worked as a US professor, and was also a diplomat for Croatia for some time. He is no lightweight in either the political or intellectual establishment. And yet he dares to speak the truth about the destruction of the West, and doesn't cringe when mentioning the perpetrators largely responsible for America's ongoing transition to third-world status. It should come as no surprise that America's most brilliant psychologist, Professor Kevin MacDonald, has written the foreword of Dr. Sunic's book, for Dr. Sunic is a man to be admired: He is one of those brave-hearted and brilliant souls who dares to stand up to be counted among those who recognize America's reckless nature. He unapologetically speaks the truth of where this once mighty nation is heading: on a one-way, broken roller coaster--downhill and fast.
In Dr. Sunic's most recent book, Homo Americanus, he tries to define just "who" is the American man, and what the American man believes. Dr. Sunic's views are very interesting and somewhat refreshing, as he has lived under one of the former communist nations and knows firsthand how totalitarian governments infringe on personal liberties; and he doesn't hesitate to point out what some Americans already realize--namely, that we too are having our rights torn asunder by the politically correct crowd who stop at nothing to destroy the last vestiges of liberty in America. In a chapter of Dr. Sunic's book, Americanism and Anti-Americanism, he comments on America's new fangled Orwellian Society in terms that describe its politically correct policies to limit free expression:
"Admittedly, every epoch has its dominant ideas, and each ruling class in every country on earth is never too eager to discard its founding myths and replace them with other myths that may be seen as factors destabilizing for its political survival. Likewise, the dominant ideas at work in modern Americanism are often hailed by the ruling class and its court historians as 'self-evident.' Questioning the veracity of that self-evidence can cause serious troubles for an intellectual heretic and can even lead to the signing of a death warrant to their intellectual career. For instance, challenging the principles of American democracy or probing critically into the legacy of antifascist victimology must be strictly avoided. These prohibitions are not officially on display in America; they just constitute a public no-entry zone. An author or a politician who ventures into one of these forbidden fields is at best shrugged off as as a crank by the masters of modern American discourse or labeled as a 'prejudiced' person. At worst, he can end up in prison. In most cases, however, he will find himself cut off from academic discourse and political debate, which in effect means that he is intellectually sentenced to death."
Indeed, an increasing number of Americans seem to suffer under the politically correct rules of debate. One needs only to look at such individuals as the Ph.D.-level chemist Germar Rudolf, who was deported from the U.S. and ripped from his American wife and child for having dared to write his doctoral dissertation on a politically incorrect topic in Germany years prior, where he was imprisoned after being deported. The same can be said of Ernst Zundel, another victim of thought crime who was also ripped away from his wife in the hills of Tennessee and shipped to Europe for having dared to venture into politically incorrect territory by questioning some of aspects of history. Of course, while it's political taboo to discuss such things, it is unlikely either would have been deported if they weren't white. In today's Great Society, that is undoubtedly the greatest crime--being white--and trumps all others.
Sunic touches on the topic of white guilt that has plagued America for far too long. In his chapter, E Pluribus Dissensus: Exit European Americans, he describes some of the logic used to keep southern whites in a constant state of guilt and self-hate, and how similar actions have been used elsewhere as well:
"The end of the antebellum South can serve as a laboratory for studying the guilty feelings that European people have been subject to in early postmodernity. The social malady consisting in self-hate started in America after the Civil War, only to be re-enacted a hundred years later all over Europe and postmodern America. In early postmodernity, Europe and America participated in the same joint guilt trip that can only be atoned by financial gifts and excuses to non-Europeans. . . .
"Every opposing viewpoint was labeled by the liberal North as 'hostile to freedom,' similar to the smear campaign of modern Northern successors against authors who criticize globalism and Americanism."
Dr. Sunic also breaks the social taboo of commenting on those people who call themselves the "Chosen Ones" for their involvement in changing the racial make-up of the US. For instance, after the Senate defeated the recent immigration bill, which would have changed the status of over 12 million illegal aliens, one of the first to cry about this was the exclusively Jewish organization known as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. The ADL then put forth an article arguing on the illegal immigrants' behalf. Such comments further prove Dr. Sunic's many statements:
"The process of Americanization seems to be enhanced by the rapid growth of multiracial society, which has always had strong supporters among Jewish intellectuals in America who have never hidden 'that making of the US into a multicultural society has been a major Jewish goal from the beginning of the nineteenth century' [citing George Sunderland]."
While Russia further distances itself from the Soviet apparatchik, we in America are slowly drifting that way, Dr. Sunic notes. If we in America are not too timid to take a hard look at reality, we must admit that America's laws discriminate against whites in the name of "equality," and America's white citizens are often afraid to even voice dissent against such ridiculous policies for fear of being socially stigmatized, just as it was the old Soviet policy to stigmatize the families of those who criticized its similar policies. As a result of such policies in America that discriminate against whites, it is causing our universities and companies to significantly lower the bar in an effort to have a racial make-up that is reflective of the population. Testing and skills can no longer be used as the main criteria for entrance, as America's educational institutions and companies become increasingly dysfunctional--similar to society itself in America. As time progresses, such policies will undoubtedly put America further behind in the world, and will eventually lead to third-world status unless something is done. As the economy slowly withers, there is no real need to ask ourselves, "Why?" It is but a matter of time when wide-scale non-white riots like those that have occurred in all of America's cities from time to time occur again; the real question remains whether America will be able to quell such riots. All it will take is a major, sudden drop in the economy, or perhaps the media's focus of an isolated incident such as the Rodney King case of '92. In the concluding chapter of Sunic's book, he seems to point out this self-evident truth that all Americans see but most fail to openly recognize:
"The egalitarian appetite, once observed in communist Homo sovieticus, is well under and under a new name in America and in Americanized Europe. American ideology will gain more prominence in the future, as egalitarian dynamics and wide-spread advocacy of permanent economic progress gain momentum. Once, when inequality was considered something natural, as it was in the antebellum South, or prior to the American Revolution, then even the crassest sign of inequality did not offend the observer's eye. By contrast, when everybody is declared equal, even the smallest dose of inequality becomes unbearable. 'The desire for equality becomes more and more insatiable as equality increases,' noted De Tocqueville. Consequently, as the American system becomes more and more economically opulent, even the slightest economic crisis, resulting in a small drop in living stands, is bound to cause social discord and political upheavals."
Dr. Sunic's views are refreshing and well worth reading. His book Homo Americanus should be required reading for all college students, and it is a tragic shame that it is not--yet, at least. Consider purchasing a copy of Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age for yourself, and ask your local librarian to order a copy as well.
17 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Mr Sunic uses an interdisciplinary approach to this heavy topic... Mar 17, 2007
By Michael Santomauro
"What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?"
When a reader opens up a book dealing with America and Americanism, it is commendable that he looks first into the author's ethnic, social, racial, and historical pedigree. Do not we all have prejudices about America, even if we do not wish to admit to the fact? And are not our views about the American empire, however sophisticated and learned they may be, also colored by our racial origin, our family tree, and our early upbringing? This is also true for Croatian American author and former professor in political science Tomislav(Tom) Sunic and his remarkable book Homo Americanus; Child of the Postmodern Age. Professor Kevin MacDonald, a renowned sociobiologist, and also a frequent target of the American thought police, writes in the foreword to the book:
.. " As someone who has lived under communism and has seen firsthand the workings of state terror, Sunic is in a unique position to describe the current slide of America into what he aptly terms "soft totalitarianism." This regime is maintained less by brute force than by an unrelenting, enormously sophisticated, and massively effective campaign to contain political and cultural activity within very narrow boundaries. Dissenters are not trundled off to jail or beaten with truncheons, but are quietly ignored and marginalized. Or they are held up to public disgrace, and, wherever possible, removed from their livelihoods."
Mr Sunic uses an interdisciplinary approach to this heavy topic, combining his knowledge of literature, sociology, and foreign languages and providing us with citations and translations from books and journals which are still banned in Europe, or simply discarded as "obsolete." The most interesting chapter in the book is the one dealing with similarities between the communist species Homo Sovieticus and his liberal counterpart Homo Americanus. These twin brothers have lots of things in common: both are enamoured with the religion of economic progress and both aspire to the dictatorship of well being. Both held, or still hold to their political myths described as "self evident" and punish those who challenge these myths. Sunic writes that Communism disintegrated in the East, because it had been fully implemented in the West. His depiction of the morbid intellectual climate in America, which is very reminiscent of the communist higher learning, is quite vivid:
"Western European and American universities, particularly in the fields of social sciences, were thus in a position to field more true Marxist believers than their communist fellow travelers in Eastern Europe. In the following decades Western European political elites went a step further: in order to show to their American sponsors democratic credentials and their philo-Semitic attitudes, they introduced strict legislation forbidding historical revisionism of the Second World War and any critical study of mass immigration into Western Europe, including the study of negative socio-economic consequences of multiculturalism and multiracialism."
Sunic is highly critical of the Biblical legacy in America in which he sees the causes of all problems in our so-called postmodernity. He emphasizes the heritage of Christian universalism and, especially in the case of America, the heritage of Puritan moralism. Several writers have noted the Puritan spirit of American egalitarianism and democracy combined with violent crusades against immorality. In the 17th century, Puritan areas had low levels of personal violence but the highest levels of public violence directed at heretics and those suspected of witchcraft. But the Puritans added a high degree of cohesion within the group made possible by a powerful emphasis on cultural conformity (e.g., punishment of religious heresy) and public regulation of personal behavior related to sex (fornication, adultery), public drunkenness, etc. One might say that American Puritans tried to square the circle by combining egalitarianism and democracy -- both strongly associated with individualism -- with high levels of cultural control -- a collectivist trait.
But, as Sunic emphasizes, it is the Puritan tendency to pursue utopian causes framed as moral issues that stands out the most -- their susceptibility to utopian appeals to a `higher law' and the belief that the principal purpose of government is moral. New England was the most fertile ground for "the perfectibility of man creed," and the "father of a dozen `isms.' " There was a tendency to paint political alternatives as starkly contrasting moral imperatives, with one side portrayed as evil incarnate -- inspired by the devil. Puritan moral intensity can also be seen in their "profound personal piety" -- their intensity of commitment to live not only a holy life, but also a sober and industrious life. In the Chapter "In Yahweh We Trust: A Divine Foreign Policy," Sunic writes:
"After the Cold War, America also became the arbiter of world affairs and the interpreter of international law. Whoever militarily challenged America ran the risk of being placed outside the category of humanity or labeled as a terrorist. Once declared outside humanity or declared a terrorist, a person, a nation, or a regime could be disposed of at will. When the Soviet Union and communism were gone, other negative archetypes had to be invented in order to better profile America's unique democratic zeal. By the beginning of the third millennium, the negative fixation on the Other found its substitute in Islam and the official mantra of "fighting radical Islamic terrorists" all over the world. It is striking how America, ever since its foundation, has resorted to negative profiling of other political actors, seldom looking at the specific root causes of the problem that stood behind their hostile un-American behavior."
Sunic's book presents a good piece of scholarly and readable work in which the author trashes multicultural and liberal truths of a present day America. At some point the negative consequences to the European population of the U.S. of multicultural ideology and massive influx of other peoples will become so obvious that current levels of control will be ineffective. We will be like the Soviet Union when it became, in Sunic's words, "a make-believe system in which nobody truly believed and where everybody, including former communist party dignitaries made fun of in private." Dr. Tomislav Sunic, notions of "democracy," "multiculturalism," "political correctness" and hyper-individualistic "freedom" now threaten the country's European heritage and some day Americans may be cursed by their descendants. Or perhaps they will one day read Tomislav Sunic's excellent book and think about what might have been.
21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Understanding the new Soviet USA May 20, 2007
By Dr. G. Fredrick Toben
Adelaide, 20 May 2007
Anyone who writes about >Americanism< at the beginning of the 21st century is propounding a world view, and for me that means having to get past the view formulated in 2000 by Jacques Barzun in his classic, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life.
Multi-lingual Croatian-born and US-educated scholar and former diplomat Tomislav Sunic does not mention Barzun in the index of names of his 214-page paperback book, nor is Barzun's book mentioned in any of the 230-footnotes.
This may be because Sunic is far more modest in his attempt to bring into focus the elements, the myths and legends that make up the USA where >political correctness< has gone overboard. For example, by enshrining in law aspects of the 2001 US government official conspiracy theory that >Arab terrorists< perpetrated 9:11, it is more difficult to investigate the various events surrounding this tragedy. If insurance companies pay on claims made by victims of 9:11, then that supports the conspiracy theory and sets events and incidents in legal concrete. To chip away at such legal structures is thus essential because they effectively distort societal realities. In his book Sunic does not shy away from such an enterprise.
When I began reading Homo Americanus I recalled that Barzun spent relatively little time on illuminating the post-World-War I-II period, something that Sunic does in some detail. Barzun, for example, in less than a page skims over the period that Revisionists literally have thrashed to death: the Holocaust-Shoah that has brainwashed the German people with a sense of guilt to the point of self-destruction. Imagine, you are accused of having been part of a nation that allegedly killed millions of Jews, but then you are not legally allowed to question for truth-content any aspect of this allegation. The last time this psychological mechanism was used with devastating effect at a national level was in the Soviet Union and ist satellite states, and before that during the infamous Christian witches' trials. Sunic surmises that such state of affairs is already well entrenched within the US body politics.
It is almost as if Barzun's sweeping view of Western human endeavour has distilled the essentials that have produced the degenerated human condition called consumerism-hedonism without specifically focusing on the Jewish question, i.e. the role played by Jews in establishing >the Jewish century<, something that is picked up and elaborated upon by Sunic.
Barzun's vision spans more than just the proverbial three generations, and it comes close to that still operating within Chinese history where a six-thousand-year written perspective operates where the dominant value is harmony. Hence the Maoist period of upheaval >revolution< is contextualized as a mere aberration not really of any significance - though tell that to those individuals and families who suffered personally during this catastrophic period of upheaval. In his world view Barzun would not find, for example, Dr David Duke a significant person on the stage of US public life, while Sunic, and evolutionary psychologist Professor Kevin MacDonald - in his Foreword to the book - regard Duke an important figure because Duke-hatred illustrates the mechanism of >political correctness< within US academic and political circles.
Hence Sunic's focus is more microscopic, and by his reasoning the Jewish question deserves to be addressed, something Barzun in his sweep of Western civilization would regard as merely one of a number of factors determining the USA decline.
Sunic goes to great lengths to contextualize the perceived decline of the USA through its self-destructive multiculturalism and immigration policies, and shows how a belief in the >Holocaust-Shoah< has dismantled and replaced, at least in public, the once dominant concepts of Christianity.
The recent death of one of the US's leading Christian Zionists, Jerry Falwell, gives lie to the much-celebrated division in Western societies between church and state. Even here in Australia, where we have a secular state structure, the current government is well known to be courting Christian fundamentalists who are much like the Christian Zionists in the USA that blindly support the racist Zionist state of Israel.
In theocracies, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the unifying universal concept that holds the country together is Islam itself, while in the USA it is, as Sunic notes, a somewhat infantile materialistic secularism where >political correctness< masquerades as intellectual prowess. He labels this state of affairs as >soft totalitarianism< that he regards as just a step away from the communist-Marxist totalitarianism that Sunic knew so well from his Croatian times.
That Jewish interests thrive on secularism is all too obvious because for Jews it eliminates any competition, such as Christianity and Islam. Any opposition, any resistance has been neutralized by concepts such as >egalitarianism<, >liberalism<, >human rights<, democracy< and >freedom, among others. That Muslims adhere to their religion, in private and in public, is not pleasing to the Jews who know the world of Islam does not fear them as does the Christian world. The world of Islam thus remains closed to Jews while the Christian world is easily manipulated into eliminating itself. The term >Judeo-Christian< speaks for itself.
This realization enables Sunic to perceive the intimate connection between Judaism and Christianity. Interestingly, devout Christians would reluctantly admit that they spend an inordinate amount of mental effort to intellectually separate Judaism's impulse called >Christianity< from Judaism proper. Some would even go so far and formulate a new concept in order to retain the intellectual distinction between Judaism and Christianity, instead of viewing this religious impulse as a refinement, a development of a primitive ideal, which in essence was that Christ eliminated the concept of scapegoating and materialism by augmenting pure hatred with the concept of love.
The label >Churchianity< is supposed to explain away Sunic's focus on the Puritan problem. Sunic does not see any relevance for having to go down this sterile path in order to illuminate his concerns. Anyone who is worried about this issue is invited to research this matter and discover how many Puritans were also Freemasons. This would clinch the Sunic argument because via Freemasonry there is a direct link to Judaism. To this day all Freemasons once a month proclaim that their mission, among others, is to help rebuild King Solomons Temple in Jerusalem.
Tom Sunic, who has had first-hand experience living under communist control calls the political developments in the USA >soft totalitarianism< because to date the First Amendment that guarantees free expression still operates, but only just.
The attack on this pillar of >western democracy< is well under way by splitting free expression into >free speech< and >hate speech<. Once the latter is established, then the usual words that make up the conceptual prison begin to grip: hater - Holocaust denier - antisemite - racist - neo-Nazi - xenophobe, and the latest - terrorist.
The reliance on such explain-all concepts to gain political consensus inevitably fails because an individual's self-reflective intelligence is suppressed by their use only for a while. As thrusting minds refuse to be stifled, refuse to be switched-off, in such insipid battle of the wills, the inevitable then occurs and is already in progress in the western world: stifled political activism will not be held back and >soft totalitarianism< is forced to implement draconian legal measures in order to crush dissenting minds. Full-blown Soviet-style totalitarianism influenced by a Talmudic mindset begins to destroy basic relationships that make up the body politics, starting with marriage, the family, the local community. As Sunic points out, we saw this in the USA when Revisionist academic Germar Rudolf was forcibly removed from his wife and baby girl on grounds that his application for US political asylum was >frivolous<. The US bureaucracy handling his case had already fallen in line with the German bureaucracy that delights in punishing anyone who refuses to believe in the >Holocaust< narrative. Sunic elaborates at pp 54-56:
>>Nowhere is this sign of American hyperreality more visible than in the constant verbal and visual featuring of Jewish Holocaust symbolism, which ironically is creating the same saturation process among the audience as was once the case with former communist symbolism. Soviet communist truth, which also consisted of endless antifascist body-counting, eventually triggered the opposite result from what the Soviet politicians had initially expected. Homo sovieticus did not believe in communist victimology, even when that victimology contained elements of credibility. The best proof of communist mendacity was, ironically, laid barren not by the proverbial counterrevolutionaries or the world bourgeoise, but by former communist apparatchiks themselves. This explains why after the breakup of the Soviet Union the same apparatchiks did not have qualms in rapidly converting to Americanism and anticommunism. One may conclude that if they so skillfully betrayed their self-evident beliefs once, very likely they will equally quickly discard their newly adopted American ideology - when time becomes ripe for new >self-evidences<.
>>In a similar fashion, the American visual description of the hyperreality of Auschwitz will not enhance a better understanding of the Jewish question; it will cause more anti-Semitism. >It is the perpetuation of it in a different guise, under the auspices not of a site of annihilation but a medium of discussion,< writes Baudrillard. The larger postmodern narrative about the Holocaust runs thus the risk of no longer representing a historical event, but of turning into a massive media non-event.<<
>>If something is >self-evident< it does not need to be repeated ad infinitum, it need only be stated once. Communist systems were replete with >self-evident< truths and questioning that truth could land a dissident in jail ... if an ideology or a political belief is founded on frail evidence, its enforcers and disciples are obliged to resort to its constant repetition. The censorial intellectual climate in the American media, so similar to old Soviet propaganda, bears witness that American elites, at the beginning of the third millennium, are worried about the future identity of the country they rule.<<
To that I would add my personal observation that I offer Iranian students during my visits to Mashhad and Teheran. If you hear the US president talk about >freedom< and >democracy<, then be careful and think of unbridled predatory capitalism producing unrestrained consumerism that ends in enslavement to debt finance. In the case of Germany and Japan one can add another factor: US military occupation for over a 60-year period - and on-going. In Germany's case, as Sunic points out, the mind is also occupied, something that the Japanese resisted quite effectively. The Japanese talk the talk, as required of them by the US but they do not do the walk, something the Germans so shamefully engage in, which David Brockschmidt captured in his quip: >>The Germans went from national socialism to national masochism, feeling guilty about being alive when they don't have to feel guilty.<<
Tomislav Sunic's >Homo Americanus< content page indicates how he has approached this fascinating topic of observing a nation in transition where generational thinking is frowned upon and where the quest for immortality and the fear of death is the defining value. Extreme make-over is all the rage, where physical enhancements are possible but mental enhancements whither tragically because the belief is that such will automatically follow a physical tuck here and a tuck there. To date no voice-tuck nor a brain tuck has been successful.
Still, no matter how perverse the quest for existence becomes, there is hope wherever the inexorable life-giving impulses still cry out for fulfillment within a value system that is life-affirming rather than one wherein life-denying impulses gain the upper hand through hedonistic consumerism backed by naked military might. After all, there is more to life than just having >a good time< and >looking beautiful< and >making money< and >dominating< others.
Wherever blatant materialism rules without being tempered by cultural leavenings, the brutishness of human existence thrives and ugliness rules supreme. Tomislav Sunic knows well the lesson Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen teaches us all: the quest for truth and beauty is a life-long process, and you can't force anyone to love you, and lusting for power in the guise of the master-servant role is a poor substitute.
Now, may I suggest you explore and read the details yourself, but let me be politically incorrect by stating that a note of caution is in order here. If you do not have an intellectual framework, then the book will not be an easy read, i.e. if you have just bungled along through life, moving from one particular event to the next without having developed an overarching conceptual structure that guides your mental processes, then you will be confronted with conceptual issues that you may find >offensive< to your value system.
So, mentally challenge yourself and be politically incorrect and get your copy of Dr Tomislav Sunic's >Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age<.
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