Journalists usually get slammed for being too negative. For ambulance chasing. For accentuating the negative.<\/p>\n
But once again, I want to wade into the troubled waters of a little anecdotal optimism.<\/p>\n
Troubled, because this is the thing that I usually get beat up for, from commenters on the left and the right.<\/p>\n
During my two week vacation, we drove through ten American states, breezing across the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, and the Great Lakes states.<\/p>\n
The fascinating thing was how good things looked, at least in contrast with the daily headlines we read.<\/p>\n
Restaurants? Packed. Truck stops? Jammed with tractor-trailers. Retail shops? Bustling. <\/p>\n
Some other take-aways: Despite all the lamentation about America’s crumbling infrastructure, the roads and interstates that we traveled looked great.<\/p>\n
Clean, modern, well managed. <\/p>\n
What’s more, we spent the whole trip “wired-in” on my wife’s Blackberry, able to surf the net while we drove. <\/p>\n
We arranged hotels, navigated, stayed in touch, all through our supposedly hopeless and antiquated telecommunications system. <\/p>\n
In the middle of our trip, a cutting-edge American company (Apple) released a new must-have high-tech product (the I-Pad). Pretty cool.<\/p>\n
After all the gloom and doom talk, I sort of expected to find a third world country out there.<\/p>\n
The right leads you to believe that you’ll find hordes of restless illegal immigrants, gangs, and godless lazy people waiting for handouts.<\/p>\n
The left mutters about obese, rage-filled tea partiers.<\/p>\n
Nope. <\/p>\n
I saw a lot of people up really early, working really hard. I saw a ton of energy. I saw…normal life.<\/p>\n
I know this isn’t everyone’s experience. There remains a lot of pain, with unemployment high and some big systemic problems.<\/p>\n
We have real debates, real challenges, real differences that divide us.<\/p>\n
But it was still a comfort to find that America is still out there, humming along, looking good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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