Are Americans reappraising themselves, or at least are intelligent Americans doing so?

The old stereotype was of America, the land of the free, the home of the brave etc.  Not that all writers and thinkers thought this by any means. But a new collection of writings shows a growing sense of disillusionment. Ben Marcus’s New American Stories, according to a reviewer in the Guardian Weekly (11.9.2015), “steadily crystallises a vision of the US as a locus of callous narcissism, exclusionary greed and militaristic aggression”.

Does the same apply to Australia?