I live in a van in the Valley, have an engineering degree from a top school, bankruptcy, student loan debt over me I can never hope to repay but cannot hold a job. No drugs, no smoking, no drinking, no sanitation issues, and no hanging out in the daytime with the locals.

As the learning experience of life, I realize that much of what Americans believe is a lie and that they cling to ideas and beliefs that aren't helpful for them in their circumstances: aspirational "rich" people who take up attitudes and political fashions that hurt themselves and let themselves be divided-and-conquered with artificial divisions until we're atomized and estranged from one another into seemingly virtual isolation. Plus, there's American hyper-individualism and anomie of discontent and hopelessness that's degrading the society from a network of communities into a Kafkaesque Lord of the Flies, anarcho-vulture-capitalist nightmare. American "exceptionalism" now seems to mean "If I get mine, screw everyone else."