America's Upbeat Mood

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America can thousands of working-class people go on their days off and drink beer and wave pennants and watch a baseball game." Nowhere but in America—and Japan and South Korea and the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and so what? Let her feel patriotic when she watches the Dodgers play ball. The Olympic torch had nothing to do with patriotism either; indeed, it is a symbol of supranationalism. But as the torch zigzagged among them from east to west this summer, people waved flags, cried and sang America the Beautiful.

Once ignited, a sense of optimism (like pessimism) can be self-fulfilling: the U.S. has cheered up partly because enough Americans willed such a change. It is the power of positive thinking writ large. "Magic takes over from reason at such times," wrote Author Gail Sheehy last month in a paean to the new mood. Christopher Reed, writing more acidly about the Olympics for Britain's weekly Spectator, found Americans "feeling proud about their pride." Is the bonhomie real, or is the country engaged in massive autosuggestion? When it comes to a subject as ineffable as the mood of America, sharp distinctions between public perception and palpable reality are not possible, and may be moot. "Sometimes I have to wonder whether the facts are really there," says Harvard University Theologian Harvey Cox, "or whether this is simply a note of wishful thinking. But the very fact that we would like things to be better is what's important."

Not everyone is caught up in the buoyant mood, of course. Social Historian Christopher Lasch dismisses the phenomenon as gassy and unreal. "There seems to be a concerted effort in the media," Lasch says, "to present this view of a vast improvement in the public morale. But I doubt that it's much more than an emerging consensus in the media." Farmer Ron Nelson of Columbus, Kans., harbors a similar skepticism. "I have a wait-and-see attitude," he says. "It's easy to see flag waving during the Olympics, with all those medals and all. Patriotism was promoted during the Olympics. But do we have it because we feel it or because they tell us to feel it?" Hodding Carter III, State Department spokesman in the Carter Administration, believes that there is indeed a new swagger in the American walk but is not sure he approves. "Patriotism is back," he wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal, "as everyone seems fond of saying these days, and more power to it—I think. Depending on how you define it, patriotism can be a healthy love of country or something quite different and disturbing."

For many blacks and poor people, all the sunny talk seems irrelevant, almost mocking. According to the Yankelovich survey for TIME in August, 71% of whites said they felt that things in the U.S. were going well; non-whites were evenly divided on the question. Furthermore, nonwhites in the survey (58% to 38%) agreed with the statement that "the country is in deep and serious trouble," while whites just as strongly (33% to 60%) disagreed. According to the poll, cheerfulness about the country is directly related to income level. Father Charles B. Woodrich presides over Denver's largest ghetto parish, and operates a breadline for 500 people a day. Declares Woodrich: "Nobody says things are better. If we're in an