Maybe I started talking about something else in that comment (the trend of grimdark fantasy, and what I'm doing in the context of that trend) and you weren't responding to it, and I assumed that you were. I don't think that what I'm doing fits with what you don't like - not in the respect of it being hipster criticism, anyway, although I don't know about the "hero" thing.

You mean who are we as Americans or who are we as people? And I get what you're saying, but I don't think that's true everywhere - in sf/f/h, for example, criticism is generally frowned upon as elitist and useless - though that doesn't mean there isn't dispute over what sf/f/h is "supposed" to be, and I suspect that would always be true. I get that it's easier to be against something than for something, especially in politics, and maybe that's indicative of a certain cultural depression or something - negative internal thought processes and the like.