Word: revell
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Opinion v. Opinion. Myth No. 3: America is "the citadel of reaction." Revel's reply: Nothing quite as unreactionary as Ralph Nader or the mass opposition to Viet Nam has ever happened in Europe...
...just what is the "absolutely necessary" and rather total transformation Revel calls for? Little short of Utopia. All Revel seems to expect is an end to "the notion of national sovereignty," some sort of "worldwide economic and educational equality," the "abolition of war," an "elimination of the possibility of internal dictatorship," and worldwide birth control...
...prescribed change, Revel asserts, is already taking place in these United States. As he goes through the motions of proving it, Revel spends a good deal of time trying to destroy myths that cynical Europeans and guilt-ridden natives share about the New World...
Myth No. 1: "Conformity" and "uniformity" are now the chief characteristics of American society. "The truth," Revel writes, "is that American society is torn by too many tensions not to become more and more diversified." He sees the U.S. as a healthy bundle of contradictions, "a diversity of mutually complementary, of alternative subcultures...
Myth No. 2: Americans are slaves to "gadgets." Revel's solemn counterclaim: "The truth is that there is no country in the world where automobiles, for example, are treated more like ordinary tools-or where people drive less like maniacs." Furthermore, making an assertion that will particularly outrage Europeans, he insists that "aesthetic" imagination is "more pronounced in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world...