I was just saying that America is not just the single, transparent society that [I feel that] Khar made it out to be. Just stop trying to make everything a comparison, it's unproductive.
I think you have to explain it a little better than that, with evidence and such because I don't see how it isn't. It's unproductive to just state a point, you have to back it up a bit or slow people like me won't get it.
Fine.
First of all, no well established society is going to single-faceted. Even in a place where legitimate self-expression is extremely dangerous (such as North Korea) I believe that there is going to be some cultural variation. What I mean by "I believe" will be explained in a minute.
Something you need to realize is that a person simply cannot fully understand a culture until they've embraced it, as far as I'm concerned it is impossible. The mainstream media is no representation of real life or thoughts, I have no idea what it is other then a vanilla brainfuck that allows even the most incompetent person to sit down and have something to stare at while he dies.
As a species thrives it branches out and changes, this is evolution. With a culture it is no different; two people within the same culture will separate and facilitate change just as two organisms will. When a foreign idea enters a populace it is either embraced or rejected, and when embraced it changes both itself and its environment.
Consider also that America has been tremendously influenced by other cultures. People have called it the melting pot. My great grandparents were almost certainly involved in the Herrin massacre, but you don't know what that is, of course. Herrin has spent the entire time since that event trying to make up for it, and for that reason (on top of being one of the most friendly and welcoming places around) I don't think that today it has any true parallel. It is not any particularly special place, but if you just consider how immensely that single event changed the town, and then think that thousands of other remote towns have been made unique by their own history, I think that it's only fair to say that nowhere in the world is going to be exactly what an outsider thinks it is.
If you're willing to say that America is basically what you perceive it to be then you have no place suggesting that any other stereotype is invalid. Is England a place where everybody sits around drinking tea and eating crumpets and being ridiculously prudent and mannersome? Fuck no, of course not, some things really are not as simple as they appear.