I began my four-year stay in the United States at the proverbial “best and worst of times” - one week before the inauguration of newly-elected President Barack Obama and mere months after a world-shaking financial meltdown on Wall Street. It was clear that the US was in for some really rough economic times. But the historic election of the country’s first black president gave many Americans hope.

This strange mix of misplaced optimism and excessive gloom would ebb and flow with the seasons. What truly defined my experience in the US was the epic level of political dysfunction in Washington DC, where I was based. Open warfare between Obama and an intransigent Republican party took the US to the brink of a historic default in 2011. Bickering prevented effective legislation to help the millions of unemployed. Powerful lobbyists and interest groups froze efforts to tighten control over gun ownership despite a seemingly endless series of horrendous shooting incidents.

Americans like to dismiss the political gridlock in Washington as something alien to the rest of the country. But to me, it was clear that the destructive politics in the US capital had “infected” faraway cities and towns in other states. Traveling through America, I was often struck by pessimism surrounding about the country’s political system and its national leaders. Many felt the country was going in the wrong direction, and wasn’t hopeful anyone could really shift the larger political and socioeconomic forces lined up against their local economies or problems in their communities.

The one place where this “can’t do” attitude really left a deep impression was in Huntington, West Virginia. In June 2010, my wife and I spent a week there to try to understand why the city had become the “fattest in America”. A third to about half the adults there were obese, depending on which report or survey you believed. What struck me was not so much the severity of the problem but the sense of resignation in the community.

Pastor Steve Willis, one of Huntington’s staunchest health advocates, told us: “We are not divided on the fact that something needs to be done (about the high levels of obesity). I think we are divided on whether there is something we can do to make it better. And many people have told me there isn’t something better we can spend our time on because we can’t fix this.”

I would keep hearing different versions of this lament over the years. Sensible gun control won’t ever happen because the National Rifle Association is too powerful. Local jobs outsourced to China won’t ever come back because companies are too focused on the bottomline. The list goes on and on.

It was a particularly difficult time in America. But looking back at these photos, I wonder if things have ever been easy.

China 2003 - 2011

Life behind the Three Gorges Dam

September 5th, 2015

September 5^th, 2015