On Sun, 23 May 2004 21:55:09 +0200, "Emmanuel Gustin"
wrote:

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
news
You need to broaden your circle of friends. Go back to the 2000
elections and check the "red states and blue states". Visit some of
the 40 red states of what we like to call "the Heartland" of America.

Frankly, considering the treatment "Homeland Security"
now is planning to give to foreign visitors, which includes
photographing, fingerprinting, and writing down what we
had for lunch on the aircraft ("did not have pork -- possible
terrorist"), I am not exactly looking forward to travelling to
the USA again. (I probably can't avoid it.) Not that I can
otherwise complain about the hospitality of Americans;
as an inhabitant of "Old Europe" at its oldest, I have never
encountered any hostility.

The "good news" is that your treatment isn't much worse than what
domestic air travelers experience these days. I've become a "frequent
driver" rather than a "frequent flier" for most trips.

And, I could tell you some horror stories of travels to other
nations--I recall a particularly tedious trip to Morocco and an
"unusual" border crossing between Turkey and Syria.

As for Europe, I lived there for nearly eight years and must freely
acknowledge that European hospitality was excellent.

Avoid E. Coast universities, upscale big city yuppie neighborhoods and
welfare-dependent inner city areas. Meet farmers, business owners,
entrepreneurs, managers, supervisors, and military folks (particularly
seek out some Vietnam vets like officers or ex-POWs).

I wasn't claiming to wide statistics, nor citing any "evidence."
I was just making a personal observation.

As for the statistics, most of the people I met in the USA probably
fall in the "business owners, entrepreneurs, managers, supervisors"
category, even if they had an university education; people with
purely academic jobs were a minority.

Unfortunately for America, the level of political discourse has
plummeted in recent years. Few Americans seem to have a clue about the
complexities of political events and most seem quite content to
ignorantly regurgitate the last sound bite that fit their particularl
political ideology.

The President still holds a greater than 60% approval rating

Latest polls give figures well below 50%, AFAIK.

Be sure to distinguish between the "approval rating" polls and the
election polling.

The Chinese curse is definitely operative--we live in interesting
times.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8