It's a great question. I had to think about the answer, with bourbon and a hot tub.

I came up with this:

1) Of all the countries I've been to, America is the easiest to strike up a conversation with a stranger, and that stranger is most likely to be friendly. This may be a function of my American heritage, but no matter how long I would live abroad, I'd always be "the American" so in the end it doesn't matter.

2) America is a rigged game but it's not so rigged that I don't feel that I've been given my fair shake. I fully understand that it's rigged less towards people better off than me and rigged more towards those worse off, but I have a nebulous understanding of the rigging and am used to the gradient. Your mileage may vary. All prices plus tax, title and license. Not valid on Indian reservations or predominantly African American neighborhoods.

3) It's possibly the least homogenous place I've ever been. New Mexico and Arizona have more in common with Mexico than they do with Massachusetts and Los Angeles has more in common with Bangkok than it does with San Francisco. There are great swaths of the United States that I do not care to visit but the United States is so vast that I've found truly lovely places that don't require a visa, passport or even giving up my fruit.

4) Americans, as individuals, are generally lovely people and Americans, as a group, devolve to individuals faster than any other country I know of. We just suck at mobs. Riot when the Kings win the Stanley Cup? Front page news. Riots when Arsenal wins fuckin' anything? "Soccer hooliganism."

Look - li'l story.

When I think "France" and "Muslim" I think "banning the hijab" and "race riots." When I think "Denmark" and "Muslim" I think "cartoons of Muhammad." But when I think "United States" and "Muslim" I think about the molotov cocktail some shithead threw through the window of the mosque in my old neighborhood. And I think of the immediate vigil every old white man and old white lady launched around that building. And I think of the flowers and potted plants that occupied the stoop for the next six months, and I think of the rotating watch of old codgers playing checkers on the steps so that the muslims could go to prayers without worrying about some fuckin' inarticulate redneck who thinks "Islam=hate" because he can't think past generalizations. And I think about the fund raiser the neighborhood did to pay for an expanded parking lot rather than bitching about the mosque in city council meetings, and I think about the vigil the mosque held five years later when some other shithead shot up a synagogue.

The place ain't perfect. There are prettier. And there are all sorts of things that frustrate the fuck out of me. But holy shit, young'uns. It's a fuckin' miderm during a lame duck presidency. walk back with me 10 years to when we were hoping John Fucking Kerry would win and talk to me about despair.

This too shall pass. Give the old girl a break.