Does anyone recall that Spring poll highlighting that US patriotism as an important value had tanked to 38% in 2023 from 61% in 2019? Bad news travels fast, political banter travels faster.

It disturbed me on many levels. Sure, I had research methodology and context questions like many people that wrote about it and discovered some important “clarifications and caveats.”

Yet, my question was much larger wanting to view the issue through a lens of joy not fear, and positivity not negativity.   I approached this qualitatively, meaning that the 1000 consumers that took my survey last week could write in answers to the following question:

“As July 4th approaches, what are some of the positives of living in this country or things you appreciate about this country vs other countries you could live in? Please be as detailed and specific as possible.”

After analyzing all 1000 verbatim comments, we found some negative comments as you might suspect. Yet, when you peel it back, there are some really important positives that are often forgotten in this world of negativity that we live in.