I’m impatient with teenagers ... as I’m sure my parents and grandparents were when they had them! I wish there was a way comfortable suburban teens could get a dose of reality sufficient to make them realize how good they have it, but without fatal consequences.
My oldest daughter joined the Coast Guard when she turned 18, and has visited many of the cruddier parts of the Pacific Rim. She’s a fire-eating radical right-wing fanatic.
(And I agree about Washington.)
Hedrick Smith, Moscow reporter for The New York Times, wrote a book about Russia when he came home in the 1980's (and so, by coincidence, did another journalist even more senior than Smith; their books appeared at the same time). I don't know who it was who made the comments in book-flogging interviews, more likely Smith I think, that American liberals posted to Moscow on whatever business, back in the 70's and 80's, usually came home foam-at-the-mouth, flag-waving patriots.