First impressions while in the USA

First impressions while in the USA. Some visitors to the USA remain permanently baffled about America and Americans. With despair and accuracy they point out endless paradoxes in the typical American.

Friendly on the surface, but hard to know intimately. Hospitable and generous socially, but hard-driving and competitive professionally. Self-satisfied, at times, to the point of smugness but self-critical, at other times, to the point of masochism. And so on. They find the regional diversity of Americans confusing, too. What on earth, they ask, can a Maine lobsterman have in common with a Dallas banker, a West Virginia coal miner, a Hollywood producer, a Montana sheep-herder, or a black school-teacher on a South Carolina sea-island And they give themselves a bleak and hopeless answer not much. But that answer is almost certainly wrong these people share the mysterious and powerful intangible called nationality.

They are all Americans and, however faint, a common denominator is there, an almost invisible strand woven out of common history, a common heritage and, underneath the surface differences, a common way of looking at things. 3.