I agree. I've also spent a few a years living outside the US and while I had a great time it made me realize a lot about all the simple things about living in the US that we don't even realize we have and take for granted. The political stability, the infrastructure, the uniform culture that stretches coast to coast, and just the feeling of being surrounded by the immense wealth of it all. Just last week when I was at the grocery and walking down a gigantic freezer of just ice cream it really makes you think.
What culture? American culture, compared to most of Europe and Asia is underdeveloped and shallow. Not to mention, 20% of US citizens are not even native English speakers. All the points you're listing could be more appropriately used to describe Japan.
There is a very, very strong culture in america you probably don't realize how apart of it you are until you leave america. There are so many factors that bind us from our shared media, history, education, values, expectations, how we look at the rest of the world and how we view ourselves in relation to it. It's even more amusing when you travel around and see so many cultures trying to emulate different facets of american life, but never getting it right. Maybe if you've never left america you think there's 'no culture' because it's hard to notice when you're surrounded by it. Maybe you don't appreciate the fact you can travel 3,000 miles to the opposite coast and instantly relate to people living there. Try doing that anywhere else in the world. Oh and high immigation and non-native speakers is also very american.
What in the world is your definition of "culture"? It is not something that is rooted mainly in age, as if a 80 year old could be assumed to have more "culture" that a 30-year-old pioneering artist.
I'm sorry, I wanted to write a brief comment and it seems I offended you.
I don't defy USA has a great contemporary culture but it's just one side of it. Another side is what you so easily dismiss - the history and traditions. Culture in the sense we're discussing is not something you can associate with one person. It's a collective term that basically describes the full range of learned human behavior patterns, which of course includes the baggage accumulated over the years (in some cases thousands of years) of history. Which USA doesn't have in the same degree as most of other countries, simply because it is a relatively young country.
Maybe I put too much stress on the traditional side of culture but coming myself from culturally very uniform background I always thought about USA as a multi-culture nation. Hence my surprise at pixie's statement. Shared media, history and education are basically common traits of every country (except for the ones that changed borders recently). Unity of values and the perception of the surrounding world may really be unique to America, though I'm not sure if putting Black people from Boston and immigrants from Asia and Mexico in the same bag as Rednecks from Florida is not an overgeneralization.
What you describe as a part of culture I see as a proof of multi-culturality. Can multi-culturality be a part of culture? I guess it depends on the definition. But I would argue that American culture is not uniform (of course many aspects are but I think most historically rich countries are much more uniform in that matter).
I admit it's kind of remarkable how everyone is religious in America. A bit less if you look at the crime rate (what happened to Thou shalt not kill?) but still. However I still stand by my previous statement - all the things you mention are not characteristic only to America. Maybe you can't appreciate it because it's a foreign culture to you but culture of many countries is just as uniform as American and often richer thanks to the hundreds of years of history. And wealth is hardly an American-only thing. As I mentioned, all these points together apply to Japan as well and many of them (not necessarily all at once) to other countries as well.
Immigration and quick assimilation are both very american. America is a settler nation, we define ourselves by where we came from, and are proud about it. The second generation of immigrants growing up in america will have little to relate to from their parents culture and will be more aligned with american values. I have an immense number of friends who's parents are not from america and when they visit their country of origin they are like a fish out of water, unable to relate. So yes, a black guy from boston, the son of a mexican immigrant, and a redneck from florida are more alike than you or they realize. It's when americans meet other americans while travelling outside the US that this becomes very apparent.
There's a great scene in Oliver Stone's movie "Heaven And Earth", where the refugee from the Viet Nam war goes into an American supermarket for the first time, and it's just overwhelming.
