A few weeks ago, a Ghanaian friend of mine who lives in Ghana called to check on me. He has been following the news and from what he hears, he is worried that life in America is becoming increasingly dystopian. He wanted to know how I am faring in the current environment. I thanked him for the outreach and his concern, and assured him that all is well with me.

A lot has certainly gone wrong in America lately. We can blame much of that on our toxic politics and dysfunctional government. A recent article in The Economist cited a Gallup poll showing that 80 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing. Regarding honesty and ethics, merely 8 percent of the population rates congresspeople highly, with only lobbyists and car salesmen faring worse. The Economist says that this Congress has passed fewer laws than any since the mid-19th century, and that “when it acts, it is often to stop things working, via government shutdowns.” That is some indictment.

Washington Post columnist George Will refers to members of this Congress as invertebrates. He and many other political commentators frequently assail them for surrendering their powers to President Trump. That, in their view, has enabled the president to do things that exceed his authority, including actions that have destabilized both the country and the world.

The next time I am in Ghana, I will take some time to educate my friend. What he doesn’t know about life in America is that it is structured quite a bit differently from the one he is used to in Ghana, and because of that, my situation is not as bad as he pictures in his mind. That fact is also one that gets lost at times on those of us who live here. We stress ourselves unnecessarily because of our fixation on the things that happen in Washington.

In reality, the quality of my day-to-day life depends a lot more on what happens at my local mayor’s office than it does on the things Congress and the White House do. Water supply, road repairs, law enforcement, snow removal, trash pickup, landscaping and other such basic tasks are the responsibilities of local authorities. The elected leaders in the small town where I live continue to discharge those duties diligently. Also, they are a simple phone call away; I can always reach them when I need something.

America is a continent with 50 states in it. My home state of Pennsylvania is much larger in size than Ghana. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital, similarly has a lot less influence on my daily life than Accra, Ghana’s capital, does on my friend’s well-being in Ghana. Washington, D.C., in many ways, feels like a foreign capital from where I live.

A highly decentralized electricity supply system means that the people who provide that critical life need in my town are situated nearby and can resolve problems much faster than a distant entity could. A few days ago, I received email and text messages from my electric company regarding a power outage that had been detected in my area. I was informed that technicians were already working to fix the problem. It turned out that only six customers were affected—my house wasn’t one of them. I was notified just in case. Less than half-an-hour after the initial communication, I received follow-up communications stating that repair work was complete and power had been fully restored in the area.

For years, citizens in my native Ghana have endured power blackouts that occur almost daily and often last for hours. Those in charge of the country’s electricity grid seem to operate with the mindset that they owe no one any information. When the power goes out, people simply wait until it comes back, however long it takes. The operators have managed to condition the population to not expect reliable service. There isn’t much that anyone can do about it so everyone just lives with it.

Americans jealously guard their local autonomy. When the federal government sent ICE agents to Minneapolis recently to conduct immigration enforcement actions, the city’s residents not only pushed back against the heavy-handed tactics employed by the agents, but also the disruptions to daily life in the metropolis. Thousands of ordinary citizens braved bitterly cold winter temperatures for weeks to protest. The tragic killings of two Americans during the demonstrations eventually forced the federal government to withdraw most of the agents and scale back the enforcement operations.

If those Minneapolis protests had occurred in Tehran or some other place in Iran, thousands of people would have been mowed down by regime forces. The victims’ bodies would be dumped in some mass graves and that would be end of story. Whatever grievances they were seeking redress for would simply be pushed aside and stored for a future date. And the cycle would repeat.

In many countries, dysfunctional government, similar to what The Economist and people like George Will see in Washington, tends to translate into across-the-board socio-economic malaise. That is because in most places, political power is centralized, and the state plays a dominant role in the economy. Life gets a whole lot worse when that centralized power falls into the hands of a monstrous tyrant.

Despite all the doom and gloom in America today, I wake up every morning in my little town and drive to the same place that I have worked for the past couple of decades. Not much has changed there. The private sector, in which I am employed, is the engine of America’s economy. It employs millions of Americans who likely feel the same way as I do about the normalcy of life in our business world.

Although ordinary Americans like me are not in the clutches of the federal government much of the time, we still have to worry quite a bit about what happens in Washington. Policies made there affect things like the interest rates we pay on housing and car loans, the prices of gasoline and a host of other goods we buy, and so much more. But it is comforting to know that my fate is not overly tied to the wishes and actions of a distant power that is not as accountable to me as my local governors are.

It will be highly unwise for anyone to downplay any of the social, political, cultural and economic upheavals that America is currently experiencing. But it is worth noting that there is a part of this country that still functions quite well and remains quite beautiful. Unfortunately, that beautiful America is not always readily visible to the naked eye. It is up to those of us who live in it and see it every day to not only appreciate what we have, but also to shine the light on it for others, and the rest of the world, to know about.

That ambassadorial role is one that I intend to keep playing.