Ken brought up a point I've been chewing on since I read it, about how the negativity seems focused in the North.

I live and work in New Jersey; my extended family is almost all in Boston or the near suburbs of Boston; my GF lives out in Chicagoland. Contrary to what Tequila says, I don't watch Fox News, haven't in years and years.

And the feeling I get among those I talk to is one of...Not Carteresque malaise. Worse. One of "The world seriously hates us now, but there is nothing remotely practical that will change that fact." Add to that a fair helping of "We. Are. Totally. Screwed." Economically, in foreign affairs, and just generally.

It cuts across party/generational/social lines, too. Hawk, dove, Republican, Democrat, old, young...It's a constant. This broad sense of, if not "We're doomed", then one of "We'll never recover."

But it doesn't seem to have penetrated the South; it's a Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest thing (and I can't say much about farther west than that).

I can't figure out -why-, but it feels like what Ken says has something to it - not because of the weather, but for some reason I can't grasp.

What's the difference? What has the Northern part of the country seemingly in need of mass prescriptions of Prozac, while the South (and maybe the West) doesn't have the same gloomy feelings about the world?