As Americans celebrated the Fourth of July by watching baseball, fireworks, and Joey Chestnut hammering home his 16th win in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, poor Uncle Sam labored through the mid-summer celebration beleaguered and under siege from all sides. News items over the course of the holiday weekend reported that Americans were feeling more skeptical of their country's future and less patriotic. Seventy-four percent believe America is headed in the wrong direction, and a great majority dread the presidential rematch America seems doomed to face.
