"Above all, Morrissey's loneliness is quintessentially American: All Americans are strangers in their own land. The Native Americans were wiped out or forced onto unfamiliar reservations not just to steal their land but to make them as rootless as the white man -- to make them "American." The "United States" is a big, drafty, empty place without enough history or public houses or fish and chips shops to go around, and so Americans wrap themselves in the flag, hug the cross, huddle on the sports field, or religiously attend the movies. From time to time, they even invade foreign countries, hoping to make friends with the newly conquered/liberated people. Most famously they invented popular culture and consumerism to keep them company and have very generously exported this form of canned loneliness around the world." - Mark Simpson - "Saint Morrissey"