>>32
I don't personally watch much TV, and what I do watch is science/history/comedy, not really news, which I tend to get online from rss feeds and occasional browsing of BBC, USAToday, the Economist, CNN, MSNBC, WSJ, Google News, and occasionally the Spiegel. Most of what I've seen over the past few years has been critical of.
When you say "American lifestyle." I think of all the differences I've seen in people here, all the disagreement, the different cultures, ideals, values all aggregated even just within my city. There's a range in my backyard of gangs families making 20k/year 10 minutes down the road from families making 200k/year. They don't live ANYTHING alike. America is NOT coherent. Nationwide statistics don't give you the breakup by region or even by counties within states. There's huge differences over small distances. We're not one giant similar mass, we're a collective of polar opposites. That's what I see, and what I want you to understand. You're talking about America like it's just one thing, I see it as it is, a union of smaller things.
When I mentioned things being "reputable" I was talking about sources for your statistics you mentioned but didn't elaborate on.
I'm not pretending our economy didn't take a big hit, but it hasn't been failing horribly in the past few years, and related to what I said above, the way it affects people varies incredibly even just down the street.
You've classified me incorrectly, as I feel you have most Americans. I don't agree with our current foreign policy, or economic policy, or social policy (which you either left out or included in domestic economy?) I think both major parties have lost their way, and the line between them is too blurred in most areas.