Living north of their border, quite comfortably and peacefully, I can honestly say I have no interest in visiting most of the whole thing, aside from some tourist attractions here and there. With friends, and not alone.
I know a decent number of people from various parts, all of which perfectly normal and reasonable, but most remind me (every time I ask or wonder) that they feel they're part of a smaller minority of relative sanity in an ocean of blobs, zealots (political/religious/etc), hicks, tossers and just generally odd people of kind or another. And while I tend to think of that as an exaggeration I tend to think that the feeling is more what matters, rather than the numbers, each time I see some good old US fear-news or a red-white-and-blue forum for a hot button issue. Or rather, one that's raging down there, but has long since been settled in may other parts of the world.
Personally I'd say the ideas of "lack of desire to visit" and "distinct feeling of not being welcome" more suits how I feel about the US. I also tend to find it a more than a bit depressing that some colonial era declaration (right to bare arms, I mean, specifically) has been allowed to balloon to such a point where you might have to be worried about how many people you pass by on the street are packing heat (with 17 more at home, all legal, maybe, but still).
Tangential, I know, but I think it's odd when there's been this much time that's passed and still not enough people have noticed/agreed that perhaps not everyone should have access to deadly weapons produced almost solely for the purpose of killing people/things (or the threat of injury, in the case of peacekeeping). Sorry, I think my head's gone somewhere else...
