That's the America I know and rarely see on the news

Despite the media turmoil of the past couple of years, there has been at least one bright spot amidst the bad behavior, gloom, and hysteria. The emergence of journalist Salena Zito. She caught my attention during the 2016 campaign with Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally in The Atlantic. She observed:

The 70-year-old Republican nominee took his time walking from the green room toward the stage. He stopped to chat with the waiters, service workers, police officers, and other convention staffers facilitating the event. There were no selfies, no glad-handing for votes, no trailing television cameras. Out of view of the press, Trump warmly greets everyone he sees, asks how they are, and, when he can, asks for their names and what they do.

That indicates to me a reporter who is there, observing and reporting, not some party operative with a by-line, remotely interpreting and spinning. I have subsequently seen other such accounts, but never from the mainstream media.

This is the observation that impressed me:

He hammered at the importance of better opportunities in black communities as a remedy to quell today’s unrest: “We have to have education and jobs in the inner cities or they are going to explode like we have never seen before. You already see signs of that already all over the country.”

The best way, he says, is to provide good education and good jobs in these areas. “Fifty-eight percent of black youth cannot get a job, cannot work,” he says. “Fifty-eight percent. If you are not going to bring jobs back, it is just going to continue to get worse and worse.”

It’s a claim that drives fact-checkers to distraction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the unemployment rate for blacks between the ages of 16 and 24 at 20.6 percent. Trump prefers to use its employment-population ratio, a figure that shows only 41.5 percent of blacks in that age bracket are working. But that means he includes full time high-school and college students among the jobless.

It’s a familiar split. When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

Indeed, his supporters take him very seriously and the media has not been able to shake free from their conviction that he is a shallow uncouth fool whom they, they believe, could easily defeat in a debate about the fact. It does not matter how frequently Trump manipulates them into embarrassing positions of their own choosing, it seems never to occur to them to step back and look at him strategically (seriously) and quit nit-picking around the tactics (literally).

If it is by Zito, I will read it; she's that good. This piece aligns with a claim I have been making. America is a great place, with great people and we rub along and solve most of our problems locally and with one another regardless of our individual faith, race, orientation, policy convictions, gender, etc. America is just fine. The dysfunction and hysteria is localized in the academy, in the media (news and entertainment), and in the bureaucracy/NGO community. All those with their collective snouts in the trough of public money and privilege of position. Andrew Cuomo doesn't see America's greatness because he doesn't know where to look by Salena Zito.

Somewhere between Nickelsville and Bear Wallow Hollow along Virginia state route 71, the remains of a redbrick home smolders on the hillside overlooking the single lane road. Several volunteer firemen sit, drinking water near the remains of the home. It’s over 90 degrees out. The sun and heat are punishing, exaggerating the heaviness of their efforts.

None of these men will get a paycheck for risking their health and possibly their lives. But that’s okay, that’s not why they do it.

An elderly gentleman stands outside of his vehicle along Route 11 West, the Virginia-Tennessee bi-way made infamous in the 1958 movie Thunder Road about moonshine running — he’s not far from a service station. Two young men pull over and offer their help. Minutes later, he is steering, and they are pushing. He makes it to the station; they walk back toward their white service van with two sandwiches in hand he bought them at the lunch counter inside the service station.

A new waitress at a Chattanooga diner drops her tray full of ribs, macaroni and cheese, and wings just as she is about to deliver it to a table filled with family members from out of town. Half of it lands on the father of the family, staining his white shirt and tangling gooey macaroni and cheese in his hair. She is filled with apologizes and tears. They handle it with grace.

When they leave — after they finally have their dinner — they refuse an offer for complimentary dinner and leave her a generous tip.

None of these are extraordinary moments. In fact, they are really quite ordinary things that happen every day in this country. They are the tiny measures of character, which is best measured in such granular increments. Character is the mosaic of tiny acts, rather than a large bold mural making an obvious statement.

That's the America I know and rarely see on the news, in the media, or from the talking heads.