Love for America, state by state, even when they are taught to hate you

This is the story of loving America, mile by mile in a car over many decades, then watching it turn against itself.

In the mid-'90s, fresh out of college, I landed my first job at a VFX studio in Los Angeles. My girlfriend (now wife) and I packed our cars and drove across America, stopping at every sight we could find. We experienced everything this country offers: natural beauty, incredible food, and remarkable people.

Someone once asked what it was like driving coast to coast. I said, "It starts with an ocean, then a city, then a yellow desert, then a red one. You get grassy rolling plains, forests with hills, then finally another ocean. It's all magical if you're willing to look and listen."

This is my love letter to America and when I knew we were in trouble as a nation in the summer of 2016.

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The Early Trips

Having a partner who doesn't fly turned obstacles into adventures. We were broke anyway, flying wasn't an option. Our first cross-country trip meant camping most nights outside tornado zones where we got a cheap room, and catching my first rodeo. Over thirty years of trips, we made each one count: seeing something new, meeting people instead of flying over them.

In the '90s, before cell phones, we navigated in our questionable cars with Radio Shack walkie-talkies, antennas stuck out windows just to catch a signal. I'll never forget that first massive thunderhead rising from the Midwest plains, breathtaking. As someone fascinated by storms, witnessing them form like tornado chasers documented was incredible.

Even after adding two kids, we stayed committed to detours. Roswell, New Mexico—who visits Roswell unless they're driving through? Each trip started in Flagstaff if we took Route 40, then branched into adventures: White Sands, Monument Valley, Carlsbad Caverns, Mesa Verde, big steaks in Amarillo, Elk City, Little Rock, Tuscaloosa, Tupelo, Atlanta. Countless stops before reaching Charleston, my wife's hometown the state we first met and married. South Carolina still calls to me, from upstate to coast, a place where I once imagined retiring for that slower pace and life on the water.

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The Big Loop

One time we took the lowest southern route back to Charleston, then looped up to New Jersey (my family base), west to Brookville, Pennsylvania, through the Great Lakes—Sandusky, Toledo, Gary, Iowa City, Des Moines, Omaha, North Platte. From there through the Rockies, all the way down to Four Corners.

The list goes on, highways, backroads, sometimes lost without GPS, but always seeing everything this country offers in natural beauty and people. More often than not, they were friendly.

We've visited most continental states by car except Montana, Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Maine. We still hope to see them all.

We witnessed corn bloom across the Midwest as ethanol boomed. At a little dive during lunch, I got my first understanding of Monsanto's impact on farming. Farmers called them "The Men in Black" when I asked about new signs at each cornrow's end. Monsanto would test fields row by row for their genetically modified corn. If found, even if it flew in from another field, Monsanto got part of their harvest. Talk about laws against the people.

When you spoke with these farmers, you knew they wanted what we all want: to live our lives our way, raise our families, enjoy ourselves when possible, and be thankful for what this country offers. Where there was suffering, they just wished industry would return, not to be left behind.

Outside cities, life was slower, often better, but small towns emptied over time. When ethanol dropped and fields switched to soybeans, all the corn infrastructure died with it.

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The Shift

On one of our earliest trips in the late '90s, I first heard right-wing radio, Rush Limbaugh on AM. I couldn't understand why he was always so angry. The commercials between segments were for guns, personal bunkers, gold, security, and catheters. Telling you everything about the listenership.

With each subsequent trip came cable news, satellite, then internet. You could watch the information divide form across America in real-time.

Increasingly, when we'd stop, the events we'd discuss weren't the same. Something you might have seen with your own eyes, these folks now saw almost the opposite, similar to what we're seeing about LA right now. During summer 2016 leading to the election, we felt the seething rage forming across America firsthand.

That 2016 trip made the divide clear from the start. We didn't understand what was happening until we reached Charleston, sitting with my in-laws watching their favorite Fox News show. Then what we'd experienced came into focus, most of the show was about hating California, how everyone from there was ruining the country. Liberals, especially Californians, were to blame for all the country's ills and should be excommunicated. Sound familiar?

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Not Welcome Here

Our first confrontation happened in a small New Mexico town we'd visited many times. With kids, we'd break trips into long driving days followed by short ones, letting them experience locations and unwind. This town had a summer lake with what looked like a floating city, kids in life vests running on bouncy houses, jumping in water.

This time, heads turned when we pulled up. Two older men walked to the fence: "Don't even get out, you're not welcome here."

Confused, I looked over my shoulder. "Huh?"

"We don't want folks from California here. Get back in your car and get out."

We'd been stopping there for nearly a decade. Nothing like this had ever happened. With the crowd growing behind them, my wife and I exchanged looks, lied to the kids about why we had to leave, and suggested playing in the hotel pool instead.

In Texas, we'd always enjoyed our travels through both the short northern route and the longer middle-bottom path. The western part is long, dry, red-brown cattle country, but just magnificent at night under the stars.

Trucks with Trump flags would pass, slow down, and yell at us. I'd speed up or slow down; they'd match, making my wife nervous. One even crossed lanes trying to nudge us.

Luckily, the kids were plugged into devices with headphones, but my wife and I looked at each other in disbelief, putting pieces together. California plates, we were targets.

The scariest moment happened on a back country Arkansas road. A guy on a Harley followed us for miles, close. Running low on gas, I pulled into a local station. He followed, parking in front of us, got off his bike, and stared through sunglasses. When one kid started getting out, I pulled them behind me and softly said, "Get back in the car."

He walked closer. "Where are you headed?"

"Charleston."

"Well, at least you're going to a good fucking state. Now get out of mine."

"We'll just fill up and be on our way."

He followed another ten miles before pulling away.

Spooked, we drove like madmen to Charleston as fast as possible.

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The Revelation

Then we learned firsthand what was happening. Seething rage had been fueled by media. The divide was clear, rhetoric intense, so much pointed at California and other liberal cities and states as blame. Never had I imagined states would target each other, let alone on what was supposed to be a news channel.

I understand Midwest and Rust Belt issues, I've read about brain drain and dying small towns. The concept of "super zip codes" where cities keep growing, pulling people from the country's middle, displacing even local populations, pushing them out. To them, it must have felt like a takeover by college-educated elites, which meant liberals to most.

Fewer farming and assembly line jobs meant towns supporting those institutions lost people. Shops closed, kids left. You could see it, feel it driving through. Revisiting every couple years was like watching time-lapse decay.

Local and state tax handouts to lure companies was a bad idea. Infrastructure became so cheap they could build, stay briefly (a decade or two), never invest in communities, drain taxes with corporate handouts, then move on when new incentives offered more money elsewhere. Before, companies almost had to build towns to support building companies, committing for decades. Like when companies had pensions, upper management lived within communities, was part of local structure.

Now, a distant voice says, "We need more of a bonus, close it."

They were symbiotic towns, supported companies, companies supported towns. It's understandable how rage formed, how it became easier to divide people by Rs and Ds. God forbid if you were independent, you didn't play for a team and needed shunning. Then move to the poor, immigrants, easier to vilify. They don't have money (which now defines speech in our country) to fight back. Those in power can use them to make people feel sorry, guilty, or worse, make them inhuman, call them names, make people want to eradicate them.

Then apply that to states: this state is better than that state, we should takeover that state because we don't like them. In fact, we hate them.

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The Ghost Town

On the trip back that summer, we decided to cannonball run, drive fast, stop little. We made it in under three days, chasing the sunsets. Plans went sideways when we found ourselves low on gas without snacks in the middle of Oklahoma. We saw an exit to a small town in the middle of nowhere.

The town was a ghost town, most shops closed and boarded up. Clearly a suffering farming community. Only a couple shops remained operational, including what looked like a little restaurant. We drove through town, pulled a U-turn, and parked almost out front, but it was closed.

As my wife and I checked our phones to figure out where to go next while kids complained about being hungry, someone knocked on our window. The restaurant owner asked if we were okay. We explained our situation. He said, "Come on in."

They were prepping for a fundraiser for a local political candidate that evening. He asked the kids what they wanted, then my wife and me. We said anything easiest for him would be great. He and his staff fed us, talked about what was happening in town, how they found themselves on an economic cliff's edge, needing new leaders and a plan to get the town going again. Still sounds familiar today.

When the kids finished eating, I asked what we owed him and staff. "Nothing. Was great to get to know you and your family. Have a safe trip."

That one event made us feel so much better. The divide in a small dying town didn't exist. They saw us as fellow humans with the same needs and wants. Even though we were racing back, chasing the sun, we soaked in America's natural beauty.

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The Warning

We as a nation will not survive battling each other state to state, party versus party, neighbor to neighbor. As we see globally today, complex relationships hang by threads. What made this country what it is wasn't "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or tough guy posturing, but investment in building communities, states, and our nation as one symbiotic organism. I'm Gen X, the 1950s tax code combined with the GI Bill made my parents' trajectory possible. That doesn't diminish their hard work, but there was support even if they didn't know it or recognize it.

Our nation's symbiotic relationship is fractured. We have the current administration saying they want a coup of a state because they don't like its policies, saying they're liberating us. From what—ourselves?

Let's play that through: the next liberal administration sees women treated like cattle the minute they're pregnant in red states with strict abortion laws. Should that administration invade and liberate those women from those states?

We're on a slippery slope, accelerating downward. We have state leadership saying they're okay with hurt or killing protesters this weekend, hit them with your car if you like. When did we decide that we had no moral foundation?

The world is watching, holding its breath. They now see us, America, as a failing democracy. Can we turn the tide?

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This story is 100% true, not fiction.

Sheriff Threat: https://x.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1933389762787979423?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1933389762787979423%7Ctwgr%5Ea85cb7e3056bd3097cf3817418bfc11f012b7e36%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.snopes.com%2Ffact-check%2Fflorida-sheriff-protesters%2F

Corporate handouts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_Out_Corporate_Giveaways_Interstate_Compact?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Info about Monsanto:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Books slightly referenced here:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250189998/theviewfromflyovercountry/

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/119020/coming-apart-by-charles-murray/