Disneyland, the mirror of America

I made my annual trip to Disneyland at the end of the October, about 2 weeks before the election. Going every year, I've come to find that if you want to see what's going on in America, Disneyland is the place to do it. This year the guests had a different mood than in year's past. The park was very crowded for a fall weekend and I got the sense that people were coming not so much to have fun but to escape.

While it may sound corny for an adult to say, one of the reasons I keep going to back to Disneyland is that place has a certain magic and normally the guests, from the kids to the adults get caught up in it. This year the guests were draining the magic rather than adding to it. They were their to escape something. I think it was the reality that the country is caught up in a un-winnable war where our actions have made the people our leaders claimed to be helping worse off.

After so many elections where the Democrats looked promising but failed to pull it out in the end, I refused to get optimistic about this one. My assessment of the mood at Disneyland should have given me some confidence. The public really is unhappy with where the country is headed.