Over the last century or so America has become a country where people can age in relative financial safety, can go to college regardless of finances if they have the brains, are not subject to military draft, where blacks and whites can intermarry and live in the same neighborhoods and blacks actually have some chance at economic success, where gays can actually marry each other, and where the economy is supported in large part by a significant although not overwhelming flow of immigrants.  Even porn, so long as it is kept from children, is generally legal.

Sounds to me like a country actually beginning to fulfill its original promises.

Clearly, though, from what I read above, there are a lot of people who don't like it -- who want to keep control in the hands of white males where police have arbitrary authority and women stay in the kitchen to make babies -- and, of course, where foreigners -- those slant-eyed odd skinned types with strange religions and primitive notions -- are kept out.  What is more, they appear more and more willing to resort to violence to get their way.

The excuse is used of economic competition, but the evidence is now clear that those who support these nativist, bigoted notions are not doing so badly economically.  I will admit such people are found everywhere, and everywhere they are bigoted against whatever they are not.  My experience with Americans had always been with educated ("liberal") types, and I must admit my admiration for America was based on something of an illusion.  This political season has been a disappointment.