Steve Miller Band – "Living in the U.S.A." (1968)

Somebody gimme a cheeseburger!

I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the cheeseburger not only was the quintessential American food when Steve Miller wrote “Living in the U.S.A.” in 1968, but also that the cheeseburger is now, and ever shall be, world without end, the quintessential American food.

If the cheeseburger has a serious rival for that honor, it’s probably the double cheeseburger.  Because while the legendary German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said “Less is more” when it comes to building design, Americans are too smart to believe that.  To the contrary, Americans know that more is more – especially when it comes to cheeseburgers.

The shoutout to the cheeseburger is reason enough to include “Living in the U.S.A.” in the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK.

 

But wait – there’s more!

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Consider these lines from the second verse of “Living in the U.S.A.”:

I see a yellow man, a brown man

A white man, a red man

Lookin’ for Uncle Sam

To give you a helpin’ hand

It’s commonly believed that it’s liberals who want the government should do more to help people, while conservatives believe that we’d be better off if the government did less.

But Professor Ronnie Janoff-Bulman believes that both liberals and conservatives want the government to help them achieve their goals – the difference is the nature of each group’s favored goals.  

“Reflecting a fundamental distinction in psychology,” she wrote in her 2023 book The Two Moralities, “liberals’ Social Justice morality involves approach, which moves us towards desirable ends, whereas conservatives’ Social Order morality involves avoidance, which moves us away from undesirable ends.”  

In other words, liberals would use the power of the government to push us in the direction of what they believe is a better world, while conservatives want the government to focus on preventing us from behaving badly.  But both groups want the government to do their dirty work.

“Living in the U.S.A.” not only points out that pretty much everyone wants Uncle Sam’s help, but also recognizes that identity politics – which promotes division and “us vs. them” thinking when we need to be focused on finding common ground – has come to dominate the political process.  

In order to get the government to do our bidding, we organize ourselves into tribes – there’s the yellow tribe, and the brown tribe, and the white tribe, and the red tribe (among others) –  and try to persuade Uncle Sam that our tribe is more worthy of his help than the other tribes.

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One final note about cheeseburgers.

According to Wikipedia, “it is reasonably common, but by no means automatic” for the number of beef patties and slices of cheese on a cheeseburger “to increase at the same rate with cheese and meat interleaved.”  For example, while the McDonald’s “Double Cheeseburger” comes with two beef patties and two slices of American cheese, the McDonald’s “McDouble” – which costs considerably less – also comes with two beef patties but has only one slice of American cheese. 

Click here to listen to “Living in the U.S.A.”

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