Whoever dies with the most stuff…

If Americans share one thing, it's a desperate need to define ourselves. Only in America could Tommy Hilfiger become an icon by charging $50 for flannel shirts that cost $16 at Penney's. We are not what we eat. We are what we have.

America is the great experiment in which the tribes of the world are challenged to live side-by-side, but in coming here, we left behind cultural distinctions that identified many of us for generations. In becoming Americans, we had to create our own cultural distinctions. After 200-odd years of rampant capitalism, it should come as no surprise that our predominant cultural distinction is stuff.

I was running through a nearby neighborhood the other day when I saw a ping-pong table, a home gym and other assorted items piled in a gutter in front of what those of us from a farm near Cozad, Nebraska would refer to as a mansion. These people obviously had so much stuff, they couldn't be bothered to take responsibility for it - a cultural distinction of wealth. I wondered if they were the type of people who sniffed at a yard full of dismembered auto bodies without so much as a twinge of irony. Wealth sometimes has an effect on the conscience not unlike a fork in the eye.

I was listening to C-SPAN the other morning when a man called to ask United Nations Undersecretary Richard Thornburgh why white collar criminals who pilfer billions from their employees do two years in a country club, while guys like him get 25-to-life in Vacaville for lifting “Lilo & Stitch” videos. With a completely straight face, Mr. Thornburgh replied that corporate thugs are so traumatized by mere conviction that any jail time at all demoralizes them beyond redemption. Apparently, the rest of us just pencil in jail time between trips to Wal-Mart. Of course Mr. Thornburgh couldn't just state the truth: “Well, Joe-Bob, Ken Lay golfs with the president. Thanks for the call.” No, Mr. Thornburgh would then be relieved of some of his stuff, forcing him to identify himself by other means, such as character traits like blunt honesty. This is why Mr. Thornburgh is undersecretary of the U.N. and I am not.

The irony of wealth, however, is not limited to the very wealthy. A line of credit will do.

I was waiting at an intersection recently when I spotted a couple of bumper stickers. Bumper stickers, like T-shirts and tax shelters, proclaim one of our secondary cultural distinctions - stuff we believe. Stuff we believe is commonly trumped by stuff we possess, but the fork thing keeps us from being bothered with trivial contradictions.

One read, “Take only photos, leave only footprints;” the other, “Clean air for the Shenandoahs.” I've never actually known anyone outside the Reagan administration to openly espouse environmental destruction and filthy air, but these particular sentiments were attached to a late-model Ford Explorer. The Ford Explorer makes about 14-15 mpg city and spits out about 11 tons of greenhouse gasses per year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's fuel economy data base. The Explorer is one of the most popular vehicles in the country. It makes us seem athletic, professional and outdoorsy, even while scarfing a Taco Supreme on our way to the vet with a dog who is lethargic because we don't walk him enough, or crossing 200 miles of National Park to protest a war motivated by oil.

Alas, reality can be such an inconvenience, but we are nothing if not intrepid about getting whatever it takes to make us look cool. It is the American way.

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.