Babbittry: as American as apple pie

Bab·bitt  [bab-it]

n.

A narrow-minded, self-satisfied person with an unthinking attachment to middle-class values and materialism.

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[After George F. Babbitt, the main character in the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.]

Babbitt, the second novel by America's first Nobel Laureate, satirized American conformity and consumerism all the way back in 1922.  From Nathaniel Rich's "American Dreams" series:

Babbitt is the original American everyman. By day he is “busier than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art.” Afternoons “he mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting” and after a terse dinner with wife and kids, he goes to bed, “conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account.”  ...

A real estate agent in the fictional Midwestern city of Zenith, population 361,000 (“or practically 362,000”), Babbitt is obsessed with his standing in the community, and Zenith’s standing in the world. He takes beaming satisfaction from his association with prominent local figures—like the newspaper poet, T. Cholmondeley “Chum” Frink—and joins every civic association that will accept him: the State Association of Real Estate Boards, the Rotary Club, the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks, the Outing Golf and Country Club, the Athletic Club (which is neither athletic nor a club), and, most triumphantly of all, the Zenith Boosters’ Club. ... The Presbyterian Church determines his religious beliefs, while the senators who control the Republican Party decide what he should think about war, taxes, and the state of the economy. The large national advertisers fix what he believes to be his individuality: “Toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.”  ...

[The novel's] message was plain. A democracy that demands “a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary” is no democracy.