I'll bite. Culture is the ppl in it - and you and your friends are part of the culture. Start with you and your friends. Smile a lot, treat everyone (even grumpy teenage shop assistants) with respect and work from there. And if you're thinking of them as rabid jerks, then you're in as much need as they are.

Colin Powell is in charge of Defence (oops, Defense ;-) so he's got to run the military. Increasingly this isn't defence of the US territory (same applies to most Western countries) but defence of your allies (Kuwait), or defence of ppl who can't stand up for themselves (Indonesia). The lesson of Somalia (where the local warlords beat the US peacekeepers into submission) and Bosnia (where the peacekeepers didn't have the authority to take action) have been learned, and that lesson is to make sure your peacekeepers have the backup they need. I don't agree with the missile defence system, but that'll die of natural causes the same way SDI did.

Oh, and I don't like Britney Spears and N-Sync much myself, but I wouldn't say they're symptomatic of a total breakdown in society! Maybe of a breakdown in musical standards, but otherwise I think you're whistling there.

Grab.