Americans, while happy with their own lives, aren’t happy with the direction in which the country is going:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Julie Murray says life is good. Yet gasoline prices are crimping her grocery budget, she can’t afford a larger house, and she says President Bush is not focused enough on people’s problems at home.
“My husband and I are happy,” said Murray, 46, a homemaker from Montpelier, Miss. “We just wish we could buy more into the American dream.”
Like Murray, most in the U.S. say they are personally happy and feel in control of their lives and finances, according to an extensive Associated Press-Yahoo! News survey on the mood of voters. Beneath the surface, though, personal and political discontent is bubbling.
There is a widespread unease—shared by 77 percent—that the country has meandered off in the wrong direction. Nearly all Democrats and more than six in 10 Republicans think the country has taken the wrong course. And although almost half express interest and hope in the upcoming elections, a third voice frustration—particularly Republicans.
This particular survey always gripes me for two reasons. First, it’s not a measure of what it pretends to measure. How do people know what direction the country is going in other than their own individual life voyages? They read newspapers, watch the news or commentary on TV, read books, read blogs. So, if people are happy with their own lives but unhappy with the direction of the country, it’s not taking the country’s temperature it’s taking the temperature of the portrayal of the country by opinion makers.
The second reason is that it’s completely futile as an engine for change. Nearly the entirety of all of the heated rhetoric we’re hearing from all sides is simply rhetoric. The idea that if one party or the other takes charge of the helm that there will be some major course correction simply isn’t borne out by historical experience. It just doesn’t happen that way.
No conceivable president will withdraw completely from Iraq, abolish social security or Medicare, establish a nationalized healthcare system, abolish the income tax, withdraw from the UN, sever relations with China, or enforce our immigration laws.
“We just wish we could buy more into the American dream.â€
Consumerism. Like a tapeworm, enough is never enough.
There many Americans who are very happy and disaprove in the direction that our country is heading…When I meet with my family this holiday to share a meal, with that gathering there will be happiness, When I see my grand daughter..and hear her laughter I will be happy. When I smell and taste the food at our table that we have been blessed with, we will be happy..when this current administration steals funds from Social Security to pay for the so called war on torror, I am unhappy, when this countries own corporations, big business move good American paying jobs overseas so they can take advantage of cheap labor, I am unhappy, When those same corporations sell there dangerous products back to us Americans, I am unhappy.
Once the 2008 presidental elections are over and Americans take back their country I will be extremely happy…and when those new American leaders lead with all Americans interest at heart I will be happy…
There is plenty to be happy about on a daily bases, family, friends, community, but there is also many issues to be concerned about, political coruption, corporate coruption, the distruction of hundreds of thousand of human lives for what Oil? for power…we have been lead down a very dark path, we trusted, and now we all know how badly we have been betrayed…this is a sad and frieghtening time…but it will be over soon…and Americans will once again take back our rights, liberties, and freedoms..to pursue happiness..peace and justice for all…have a great holiday…