America the Miserable

06 Jul, 2008 by Ron Coleman

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The AP wants to make damned sure you get their point:

[T]alk turns to the state of the Union, and the Optimists become decidedly bleak.

They use words such as “terrified,” “disgusted” and “scary” to describe what one calls “this mess” we Americans find ourselves in. Then comes the list of problems constituting the mess: a protracted war, $4-a-gallon gas, soaring food prices, uncertainty about jobs, an erratic stock market, a tougher housing market, and so on and so forth.

One member’s son is serving his second tour in Iraq. Another speaks of a daughter who’s lost her job in the mortgage industry and a son in construction whose salary was slashed. Still another mentions a friend who can barely afford gas.

Joanne Kontak, 60, an elementary school lunch aide inducted just this day as an Optimist, sums things up like this: “There’s just entirely too much wrong right now.”

Happy birthday, America? This year, we’re not so sure.

What a scientific sampling! What a well developed, balanced argument! What rich perspective!

What a repeat of the smear job of just a couple of weeks ago!

Alternatively the AP is right. The four or five people they quote really are representative of “America” — of what writer Pauline Arrilaga calls “we,” Kimosabe. After all, there are those “wrong direction” polls! Perhaps this “news” item really is newsworthy.

In which case, here’s the news: What a bunch of miserable, whining ingrates America has become! And how lucky America is that there are millions in other countries willing literally to risk death to beg, sneak or sue their way in here, take their places and breath the fresh air of liberty and opportunity.

It’s odd that, of all people, Pauline Arrilaga missed that angle, considering that she “writes frequently about illegal immigrants crossing the border, and about the brutality of smuggling rings that exploit them.”

What makes these people submit to such brutality… just to go in “the wrong direction”? Considering that one such story she wrote was described by the AP itself (same link) as “based on meticulous reporting” … why didn’t she ask these immigrants that question?

But she could be right. I’d rather assume the far more intuitively obvious, and historically supportable, proposition: What a nasty self-hating outfit the Associated Press is.

Cross-posted on Likelihood of Success.