My favorite play in drama school was 'The Bacchae.' It's about a king who literally gets eaten alive by all the women in the play in a kind of orgy - it's related to the word 'bacchanal' - and I loved that idea of animalistic chaos and following our own desires.
What's right about America is that although we have a mess of problems we have great capacity - intellect and resources - to do some thing about them.