While being one of the "brainless yankee swine", i do understand your sentiments. And i agree. In my mid-twenties, i spent a summer in Italy and it felt like i was on A DIFFERENT PLANET. Why was that? Well an inner geographical sense of being very far from home, but also life itself felt so different. I have thought a good deal about American culture vs. European (i am considering someday living abroad, likely Europe) and a recent observation could explain it.
As a relatively young nation, created from scratch, America is overwhelmingly defined by commerce (its roots being colonial and steered by merchant interests). Even values such as "American liberty" and the "American Dream" are economic at their core. With American society being defined by commerce, it is therefore, dominated by marketing. The marketing of products is heavily, if not solely, reliant on fostering and perpetuating the herd mentality that the human mind is so easily susceptible to. And so, American society, defined by commerce and, therefore, by marketing, is a herd mentality society (however strong Americans may insist on being "unique" and "rugged individuals". It may have been once a nation of rugged individuals, but since the early 20th century and the advent of mass media, it is no longer).
All this to say that women are the most "herd mentality-susceptible" and as a result, American women are heavily conditioned to pop culture ("mass-market culture") values and imagery. American men want to bed American women, but must play to their tune in order to do so. So American men fall prey to pop-culture's influences, tendencies, and steretypes, and it becomes all about how well one can display the fact that he understands and accepts the codes that mass-marketing has established as "The Way" in American society. Hence, the brainless yankee swine - a herd of pigs, developed and defined by mass-marketing, whooping it up and falling down drunk at frat parties, obsessed with image, obsessed with physique, chasing mindless girls across the club dance floor - girls programmed, bought, and paid-for by the mass-media and marketing firms. Vacuous. Empty. Unfulfilling. The Living Dead.
European society, on the other hand, has a different set of priorities. Family, good friendships, food and drink, art, and culture all take precedence over commerce - the making of money. European society is defined by quality of life whereas American society, corrupted by sheer materialism and dominated by the business sector, is defined by quantity of life: "what do i own and what can i get next?" American's have been brainwashed to believe that the things they own are what defines them.
So it is little wonder then, that when an American woman visits Europe, she encounters, perhaps for the first time in her life, a lifestyle much closer to the way life is meant to be lived and men who are living that kind of life. She is simply getting closer to what it really means to be human and she loves it. (The same could be said for those living in the South Pacific, parts of Latin America, etc.)
This is my observation, as an American who spent three months in Italy, and one who holds a degree in history, who has studied and admired the positive aspects of European culture. I certainly recognize that there are exceptions, many, in fact, to what i described above, but i think the generalization i have made is an accurate one.
