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| November 18, 2017 12:00 AM

Are you sleeping soundly, convinced that all is well in your city, state and country?

Or maybe you’re tossing around a bit.

A recent poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates found that 42 percent of Idahoans believe the United States is headed in the wrong direction.

That’s kind of a strange number, when you consider that Idaho voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, and the state’s congressional delegation all won election by huge margins.

But hey, there’s another way to look at this: Idaho residents are far more comfortable than U.S. residents elsewhere.

Consider this report from Bloomberg News: “For those lying awake at night worried about health care, the economy, and an overall divide between you and your neighbors, there is at least one source of comfort. Your neighbors might very well be lying awake, too.

“Almost two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) report being stressed about the future of the nation, according to the American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America survey.”

SO WE’RE less freaked than people in Maryland, Kentucky and New Mexico — or any other three states picked at random, then?

Yes.

And it’s no surprise.

Anyone living here would have suspected as much, just from a feeling you get after settling in North Idaho. There might be battles going on elsewhere, but around here there’s a sense of...

What?

Contentment?

Confidence?

The notion that we’re all in the right place?

It could be any or all of those things, actually, but we’re almost certain that the general sense of things in North Idaho is still pretty darn relaxed.

“You know, the Panhandle is almost like a state or country of its own,” said Brian Ellison, a professor of political science and public administration at the University of Idaho.

“Down here in Moscow, there’s always a sense of chaos or discontent, and even anger. We see it in our elections, which are completely different than what you have up north.

“I’d like to do a study on whether these stressful things like the economy or health care bother people in North Idaho as much as they do in the rest of the state.

“We might find that they don’t.”

THERE’S NO question that all Americans are facing a lot of serious issues, the kind of things that could change their lives.

But actually being stressed about the “future of the nation” is a pretty scary deal.

In that same survey, 59 percent of 3,400 people polled said “they consider this to be the lowest point in our nation’s history that they can remember.”

And yet that incredible anxiety has not reached North Idaho — at least not anywhere near the extremes found elsewhere in the country.

Part of it may be that we believe things are going just fine close to home.

The Dan Jones survey turned up the fact that 63 percent of Idahoans believe our own state is headed in the right direction.

Given the negative numbers practically burying the rest of the country, that’s actually a pretty amazing number.

It seems our overall comfort level is holding fairly steady.

Long may it continue.

- • •

Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. Reach Steve at: [email protected].


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