A Slightly Cynical View of the Term "American"

I was involved in a discussion today in one of my classes about what it means to be an American. Some people felt that it meant to be involved in the American system (politics, the economy) and others felt that it simply meant to live here. I feel like if you do #2, you're probably doing #1, although I guess that isn't the case 100% of the time. I've met others who relate being an American to appreciating freedom and taking pride in your country and all that, but I feel like that's just a narrow and extremely subjective of it.

I take the title "American" fairly lightly, because all it really means to me is that I live here. Sure I enjoy a lot of freedom which I definitely value, but to me that's more of just valuing my own human rights. I guess you could say that being an American is valuing that you aren't oppressed, but everyone, including Americans, are oppressed in some way or another. We all answer to some form of authority, and we all have to engage in actions that we do not wish to do at some point in our lives, whether we are rich, poor, white, black, hispanic or whatever. Authority in this sense can be good for maintaining social order and all that, but we are still "oppressed" nonetheless, even if it is in a lighter sense of the word than we are used to. I don't really have a clear answer to what it means to be an American (I welcome answers to this) but I know that everyone's answer is probably different.

To me it's basically just a label for the country that I live in, and while I value my personal freedoms here, people in many other countries enjoy these freedoms too, and I honestly don't see what would make us better than them. Sure we have a very mixed culture, but some would argue that this is a bad thing. I personally enjoy the mix most of the time, but then again, I haven't really experienced the alternative because I've lived here all my life. Once I take my eventual trip to Sweden (and hopefully more of Europe), then maybe I'll reflect back on this.