@Mogima It's honestly not stifling at all to live here. You just have to ignore mainstream media, news (cnn, fox, msnbc, etc...), and don't use social media outside of interacting with your "actual" friends and family, and you're golden. Most of the crap you see online and in the news doesn't really affect you personally, it's done but such a small (but very loud) minority of the actual population. You can live a very quiet, fulfilling, and peaceful life here. You can fill it with the things that you genuinely care about, it's up to each individual if they want to live that way (however it is a lot harder to do so if you've already wrapped yourself up in the drama to begin with).