I didn't want to see your post:
But I saw it.
So much for your "...Sadly people see what they want to see...".
To answer the thread's opening post, I have lived in:
.) Redwood City (Ca.) and read The San Jose Mercury News,
.) Baltimore (Md.) and read The Washington Post,
.) Chicago (Il.) and read The Chicago Tribune;
.) New York (N.Y.) and read The Star Ledger,
.) Knoxville (Tn.) and read something there, The Knoxville Sentinel maybe, I am not sure,
.) San Diego (Ca.) and read The San Diego Union Tribune.
I don't watch T.V., I consider it a waste.
My experience with U.S. is based on living in these places and reading the local papers.
I thought that U.S. is Michael Jordan in basketball, and Rowdy Gaines and Matt Biondi in competitive swimming.
I went to Chicago.
People weren't Michael Jordans.
They were obese, and inept in mathematics, science, culture and looks.
At work it took me great skills to qualify to come to U.S., but what I found on the ground was sub-par skills, teamwork, and ethics.
In Tennessee, an Engineering manager publicly said he was going to teach me LabVIEW because it's easier than me learning it alone, privately told me that a company like that has no time to teach and promptly took a hypocrite two-week vacation, during which I solved the LabVIEW assignment but still didn't get credit for, and I thought that's not the way I was brought up.
Many more such experiences in U.S. taught me of money greed and back stabbing over people's well being.
When Bush lied to start the war in Iraq in 2003, I understood that U.S. is made of millions of Bush-lite who don't have Bush's social power but are alike.
In the streets, locals were lecturing me about 'God' without scientific evidence, but ironically U.S. needs to import more scientific-minded people like me than people like the locals who lecture me.
The U.S. Departement of Labor considers people like me to be professionally skilled, and the people lecturing me about 'God' to be unskilled.
Still, I get lectured in the streets about this imaginary 'God'.
Reading the U.S. newspapers I observed that the Americans don't know sports.
Americans believe that golf and baseball are sports.
Golf and baseball are games.
They believe that distances are measured in yards, feet and miles instead of meters.
They believe that people are weighed in pounds, instead of kilograms.
They believe that temperatures are in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius.
Like in Europe, circa 1600.
In Tennessee, the newspaper stated in tiny print that Thorpe (no country) broke the world record in swimming in 200 free in 45 seconds.
It should have said 1:45.35 instead.
In California, the newspaper stated how many lovers an average man gets in a lifetime.
I thought "What? When I was a student in France I was getting this many in two years. Are the Americans living repressed in hospitals and monasteries, or what?"
I was born in Romania, lived in France, Canada and U.S..
The most advanced culturally is France.
I learned that I am not a Capitalist like in U.S. most people are -with consequences of being repressed-, but a liberal like in France.
I am in U.S. now, in San Diego -the city of surfers-, imposing my lifestyle on Americans.