OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – Oklahomans are finding satisfaction with the current presidential administration, despite acknowledging the divisions in America today.

“My grandpa told me a long time ago, ‘Find something you love and you’ll never work a day of your life.’ I ain’t worked yet. I just get paid to play,” Jay Lewis said.

From his cowboy hat down to his boots, life as a cattleman is in Lewis’s roots. Lewis raises cattle in New Castle, Oklahoma, and works off the ranch in Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma National Stockyards, the world’s largest stocker and feeder cattle market.

“About 10,000 head of cattle pass through here a week,” Lewis said.

Larry Bryant has been hauling cattle to and from the stockyards for 45 years. He shares the same level of gratification toward his profession.

“It’s been good to me,” Bryant said.

Lewis and Bryant recognized the divisiveness that exists within America, but their concerns for the country revolve around the agriculture industry. Both men acknowledged that Americans do not understand where their food comes from.

Bryant said his granddaughters are always asking when they can go get fast food.

“People go to the store and bring it home. They don’t realize what all went into getting that cow to where it’s at,” Bryant said. “What we eat comes off the farm, no matter how you look at it.”

Lewis added: “A lot goes into it and I think sometimes people take that for granted.”

As a cattleman, Lewis is proud to contribute. It’s a privilege to be able to walk into the grocery store and buy food off the shelf, he said.

He described it as simply one of many liberties he believes accompanies life as an American, but it goes deeper than that.

“I was never in the service, but 1 percent of the world protects our freedom. Ninety-nine percent wakes up and enjoys it. I’m in that 99 percent. I don’t take that for granted by no means,” Lewis said.

When asked to describe the country in three words, Lewis responded: “God Bless America.”

In Elk City, Oklahoma, 100 miles from the stockyards, the political convictions are more pronounced.

For pawn shop owner Steve Scout, his political beliefs are identifiable near the store entry of his shop where he displays a “Make America Great Again” sticker, but the political décor does not stop at the front door. Signs supporting Second Amendment liberties, the NRA and anti-democratic commentary decorate the front wall of the store alongside rows of bows, guns and ammo.

“We have never been more satisfied with our current president,” Stout said.

For Stout, the only president that deserves as much praise as President Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan. Despite his satisfaction with the presidency, he isn’t afraid to speak out against what he believes are the country’s inadequacies.

“We’ve become an entitled country,” Stout said.

One customer at the pawn shop agreed with Stout.

“People don’t need welfare, they need a job,” Rev. Larry Parvin said. He explained that the local prison was searching for additional employees, but no one wanted the positions.

“We’ll help people, but I’m not going to give half of my check to somebody that just wants to sit around on the couch and watch TV,” Parvin said. “Get a job.”

Stout said we’ve got more jobs that we have ever had in 50 years.

“And it’s getting better everyday under my president, President Trump,” Parvin quickly added.

The town of 11,000 attracts a high number of tourists each year due to its location along Route 66.

News21 met local radio host Nathan Brewer and his colleague, Gabe Edeny, at Beyond the Pallet Coffee Shop in Elk City.

“These people are real,” said Edeny about people out West.

Oil dominates the local economy and is part of the Route 66 spectacle that attracts tourists.

“Tourists love to take pictures in front of our oil rig,” Brewer said. He was previously the host of a one-hour radio program exploring energy and how it influences life for the Elk City community.

“When the oil fields are good and times are good, politics are secondary,” he said. Brewer recounted the influence that Trump had on the local economy even before he was elected president.

Half of the oil industry is the economy and the other half is the attitude of people,” Brewer said. “Donald Trump, theoretically, was going to be far more favorable to an energy industry than a Hillary Clinton administration, so people started getting really excited.”

Not too long after, western Oklahoma oil companies began hiring again.

“Trump is who he is. For the people around here, it’s not so much Trump love as relief that Hillary was not elected,” Brewer said.

Brewer said engagement from local citizens can define the lives of those in the community.

“I think too many people are looking for salvation in politicians, which politicians won’t deliver,” Brewer said. “If people will go out and try to make a difference in their community, that will make a much bigger impact on their life and other people’s lives by doing that, then by political activism.”

Edeny said the media tend to portray the president in a negative light.

“A long time ago as a kid, you couldn’t talk about the president the way people do. Whether you like him or not, they [the media] take him to the bottom. I’ve never seen anybody talk about even Nixon to this level. I think it just causes more division,” Edeny said.

Brewer added: “Step away from the anger and danger of politics and pay attention to what’s going on locally.”

When asked if he was optimistic about the direction of the country, Brewer chuckled and said: “Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, yes. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, no. And I take the weekend off. That’s the short answer.”

The really long answer, Brewer said, is politics divide the country.

“People need to divest themselves of politics and get more interested in their own family and where they live,” Brewer said.

He offered a recommendation for ending some of the divisiveness in the country today.

“What I would like to see is people who disagree vehemently on political matters be friends and like each other,” Brewer said.

News21 fellows Storme Jones, Brittany Brown and Rosanna Cooney contributed to this report.

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LONDON, Ky. – Jason Kovach,  owner of the Tonic Room Barber Shop & Shave Parlor, on Main Street in London, Kentucky, was eager to share his thoughts as he gave a haircut.

“The United States is badass,” he said. “The beautiful thing about the United States is you can do anything you want. Nobody is stopping you from anything. You don’t like the country, so get out.”

Kovach served five years in the U.S. Marines and offers a discount to veterans. American flags and Marine Corps memorabilia decorate the shop. Kovach has an American flag pin on the pocket of his barber’s jacket, with the words: “Honoring our Veterans.”

When asked about the biggest problem facing America today, he responded in one word: “Facebook!” Raquel Morgan, the one female haircutter in the  shop, agreed.

“You can’t enjoy your life because you’re too busy comparing and arguing for no reason,” Morgan said.

Terry Napier, a customer, joined in: “People are too sensitive anymore. You say something and they say, ‘I’m offended.’ That’s one of our civil liberties, freedom of speech. Men have fought and died for that. Nobody respects that anymore.”

Drugs and a struggling economy are also a concern in the local community of 8,000, where the median household income is $33,000.

“I moved here from Ohio. I mean, they got drugs, too; but, this area here is just infested with drugs,” James Barnett, another customer, said. He said too many children are homeless in the area.

“Small businesses can’t stay in business if prices don’t go up. I feel sorry for a lot of women that work around here and are divorced. They barely get by,” Barnett added.

Kovach, the owner, complained about kids today, and a few other patrons grumbled their agreement.

“They’re lazy. You’ve got to work, work, work, work, work. It’s hard work. Nothing comes easy,” Kovach said.

Barnett said if he could change the country overnight, his wish would be: “Get people off drugs, get them a job, and let them take care of their kids.”

Can politics change things?

“We had an election here in May,” Barnett said. “Only 20 percent of the people got out and voted. If you want something changed, yes, get out and vote. The same thing goes for the president. If you don’t vote, you shouldn’t be fussing about nothing.”

News21 fellows Storme Jones, Rosanna Cooney and Brittany Brown contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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ELKO, Nevada — Traveling along the famous dusty Winnemucca Road, the News21 SUV crossed through the gateway to the Nevada outback, the fellows taking in the last of the mountain air.

On the third day of the cross-country road trip, News21 traveled through “the Silver State” of Nevada to ask a small sampling of the 3 million residents about the climate of hate in America.

In a small coffee shop in Incline Village, a town of 8,777 on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, local resident Charlie White, who was sitting at the IV Coffee Lab, said there has always been friction in America, but people are now getting lost in the negative news stories.

“Love will always overpower any hate and misunderstanding that is happening in the world,” he said. “If you focus on love instead of hate and all the good things that happen in this country, you’ll see there is far more love in this country than there is hate.”

Sitting across the coffee table, White’s close friend Jeff Rauenhorst echoed the sentiment.

“I just came back from doing the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage in Spain, and everybody there was walking together on the same path and working together,” Rauenhorst said. “We are all just people walking this planet together. We have more in common than we have differences and most people just don’t realize that.”

A few miles down the road, at a site overlooking the blue expanse of Lake Tahoe, Nate Thomas from Boston, Massachusetts, said America can be a hostile place.

“We’ve gone backwards as a society,” Thomas said. “Racism, hate and segregation is not getting any better. It’s now more visible to everyone through the power of social media.”

About 35 miles east of Lake Tahoe in the center of the historic town of Virginia City, Paul Coombes handed out free samples of kettle corn to tourists outside Breck and Dave’s Kettle Corn Depot. When asked about attitudes and conditions in America today, he said his family has experienced hate.

“I come from an ethnic family. My daughter, Zoe, is half African-American, so I am very sensitive to the topic of hate,” Coombes said. “I think all races have a lot of work to do. It’s better than it used to be, but we have a long way to go.”

He said his daughter has been the subject of hate speech by a fellow student too young to have those opinions without prompting from home.

“That’s not something a child would think for himself,” he said.

Another 60 miles east, deeper into Nevada, Brian Baldwin, who supplies produce to gas stations and small stores in Lyon County, said America has become too political.

“America was pretty cool for quite a while there. You could go anywhere and do anything,” he said. “I had African friends who would make their traditional meals for us and Mexican friends who would make proper Mexican food. Today, you go and get sushi and you’re accused of cultural appropriation. People are too politically sensitive.”

The News21 SUV in now traveling farther into the Silver State of Nevada, heading toward Utah.

News21 fellows Brandon Bounds, Penelope Blackwell and Lenny Martinez Dominguez contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — It was a quiet afternoon for Kari Wilson, a bartender at The Virginian Bar in Twentynine Palms, a desert town of about 26,000 people on the edge of California’s Joshua Tree National Forest and the vast Mojave Desert.

Retirees and Marine Corps pilots from the nearby Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base are the usual patrons, but on this day, it’s four journalism students on a road trip examining “Hate in America.”

Wilson, 26, joined the U.S. Navy four years ago. The Navy showed her the world, including to Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and Syria, so she’s been around. She said she now loves working at the desert town bar and visiting with the people that stop by.

She greeted customers with a smile, but the conversation quickly turned serious when she was asked about her thoughts on the current state of America — politically and racially.

“We’re divided and anyone who thinks otherwise is really out of the loop,” Wilson said. “It’s really sad.”

Maybe the rest of America could learn from bars like hers, she said.

“In the big picture, we’re all divided and then you go to a bar and suddenly everyone is talking to each other,” Wilson said. “Why can’t that just happen big picture-wise? Everybody just needs to grab a drink and meet up or something.”

Wedda Warrick and Laurette Rogers, customers that day at the bar, overheard Wilson’s responses and chimed in.

“Sweetness,” as Warrick addressed this reporter, “the states have always had this bias” when it refers to people of color, she said. “You see bias all the time.”

She said bias turned to violence in 2015 when 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. It deeply upset her because it reminded her that hate still exists in the country.

She recalled traveling through Alabama in the early 1960s, about the time of the civil rights movement. Her family pulled up to a gas station and she remembered seeing two water fountains – one for white people and the other for black people.

“The black fountain had mucus and spit in it,” she said. “It was disgusting.”

Warrick said she grew up “old-school” as a kid in the 1950s and ‘60s, with her mother staying at home and her father working full-time. When Warrick joined the workforce, she said she was hired by companies and places that needed to meet a “diversity quota.”

“If you were a woman, they were hiring you,” Warrick said. “If you were black, they were hiring you. If you were of ethnic heritage, they were hiring you because they had to fill quotas. And, yes, I was one of the ones they had to fill a quota with.”

Rogers was at first quiet, but then she spoke up.

“I was raised on the East Coast by my parents and grandparents,” Rogers said. “If you ever said the ‘n’ word, you got your mouth washed with soap because that’s not the way we were raised.”

Warrick is hopeful there will be more love than hate in the near future. Rogers agreed with her friend, but had a final thought on the state of the country.

“It’s all about how you were raised,” Rogers said. “If you were raised by bigoted parents, you’re bigoted. If you’re not raised by bigoted parents, you take people as they are. And that’s all it’s down to.”

News21 fellows Catherine Devine, Penelope Blackwell and Lenny Martinez Dominguez contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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INYO COUNTY, Calif. — As News21 journalists traveled through California, residents repeatedly used one word to describe the mood in America — fear.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of difference. Fear of hate.

At Gus’s Fresh Jerky Shop in Olancha, California, Whittier College sociology major Nora Berguem explains how hate and fear still reside in America today.

Outside the colorful, quaint store hangs a flag saying “God bless America,” but she said the country still remains racially and politically divided.

“There is a lot of friction between racial groups in America. African-Americans and immigrants are particularly targeted today,” Berguem said. “Children are practically being put into internment camps at the moment. We like to say that we’re ashamed of the Manzanar National Historic Site down the road, which was used as an internment camp for the Japanese during World War II, but yet we’re doing the same thing again today. If we look back at what is happening now in 30 years, we will be really ashamed,” she said in reference to President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy where migrant families have been separated at the U.S. border.

Fifteen miles north from the lively jerky shop along one of California’s oldest highways, the News21 SUV pulls up at the Manzanar National Historic Site.

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, some 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned at the camp overlooking the vast Sierra mountains.

The now desolate camp stands alone in the middle of the desert as a reminder to American society of how hate and fear can quickly materialize.

Tourist Mina Monden, who was born in Japan but immigrated to America in 1968, bows her head at the memorial, paying homage to her ancestors.

“Hate comes from fear and lack of understanding. If you have a totally different skin color from someone else, you automatically become afraid,” Monden said. “I’m from Japan and we have thousands of different cultures and beliefs, but we never have a fight or hate each other. In America, people are different.”

Hundreds of paper cranes strung together decorated the Manzanar cemetery, left as offerings from visitors. The front of a large stone monument reads “Soul Consoling Tower” in Japanese Kanji characters.

“Being here today at the old Japanese internment camp, I feel for my ancestors,” Monden said. “Americans were afraid of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. That’s why they treated us like this here. Otherwise they wouldn’t intern all the Japanese together. They were afraid for their country.”

Tourists Terry and Elizabeth Vance from Elko, Nevada, echoed this sentiment of fear.

“Anybody who is different is a target in America today. We are building walls, we are still building weird prisons in the middle of nowhere like this Japanese internment camp,” Terry Vance said. “I think there are people who have learned (from our past). I hope in my heart that will be enough.”

Bernadette Johnson, superintendent of the National Park Service at Manzanar, said the internment camp shows what happens when fear, racism and prejudice build up against one group of people.

“I don’t think we want to make that mistake again. We know it’s a dark part of our nation, but it’s a place where people have to come and contemplate what can happen when fear and racism occur,” Johnson said. “That is what led to the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WWII. We simply cannot forget what happened to those people and we cannot let it happen again.”

Forty-five miles north of Manzanar, back on the dusty U.S. Highway 395, the News21 SUV drives through Johnson’s hometown of Bishop, California, with a population of 3,800.

It is there that reporters meet community activist Stephen Muchovej, who emigrated from Brazil and lives in the small town with his husband, Eric.

“As humans we intrinsically fear the unknown. We fear what is foreign to us. We see it within all communities,” Muchovej said. “Within the LGBTQ community, there is fear especially among the transgender community. No one, unless you are transgender can say what it really means to be transgender. There is a still a lot of fear about what that means. Fear of the unknown. And that is what is causing hate and divides in America today.”

With that parting thought in mind, the News21 SUV leaves behind sunny California to find new stories in Nevada.

News21 fellows Brandon Bounds, Penelope Blackwell and Lenny Martinez Dominguez contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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