Are you familiar with Joe Bageant's work? This is one of my favorites from 2005.

"Our ancestors came here so they could own more stuff and get richer. And our idea of freedom is centered on some twisted notion of "the freedom to get rich," the freedom to walk over anybody to make your million if you can get away with it. That is the kernel of our national culture. Perhaps it is the only culture such a diverse horde of immigrants could have created. Enough to eat and a fistful of folding cash were the only things the poor suffering bastards could agree upon when they arrived. That kind of struggle makes you mean. And the meaner we get the more likely we are to vote for the meanest candidate (because we have something of ourselves in them.) When it comes to meanness, Republicans have never been in short supply. It might even be that the Republicans represent the party of durable meanness in our black/white American psyche. Americans have been a mean assed people for a long time, though nobody will admit it. Add to that the current social splintering into narrower interest, ethnic and economic tribes and you have the very soup of meanness. Rednecks don’t like blacks. Urban Jews hold rednecks in contempt. Arabs hate Jews. Jews hate ’em right back. And the largest voting group of all, the cornpone Christians, ever on the lookout for fresh enemies as they act out their vengeful god fable, hate just about everybody, thereby making them the handiest tool of all for the political party of exclusion and loathing." -Joe Bageant, 2005