I do plan on moving as soon as I get out of college, but only because Flint is a dead end town, though I haven't completely ruled out leaving just yet. Now on the "American culture of fear", all you really need to do is turn on the news. With local news you get rape, murder, murder, drugs, robbery, rape and weather. Cable news generally doesn't fare much better. To tell the truth, I don't think it's as bad as they tell us. I swear if the news was really reflective on American society, if it was as bad as they make us perceive it to be, we'd see shootouts every hour in every city. The murder rate in this country has been falling since 1980 (10.2 per 100K in 1980, as opposed to 5.9 per 100K in 2005).

Really it's nothing more than a desperate attempt for ratings. People don't pay attention to the good news anymore, but as soon as you say "murder", they will hang onto your every word. Fear sells I guess.