Following the international, national and local news in search of subjects for editorials and columns produces a special optic in one's head.

On the one hand, I never fail to be fascinated by the panorama of events that catch the attention of the American public, evidence of the liveliness of their minds and the breadth of their interests. On the other hand, what sometimes terrifies me in considering the long-term prospects for survival and success of the United States is the public's capacity to be captivated by total trivia.

The critical issues the American public do not lock onto as necessary to be resolved include the deteriorating state of our infrastructure. An example of that was in our newspaper Friday, with photographs of some of the 77 bridges in the five-county Pittsburgh metropolitan area with "serious deficiencies," a nice way of saying they are rusting out and risk tumbling us into one of the local waterways.

The question that troubles me here is whether we would rather build a bridge in Pakistan to try to get them to love us or fix something like a major bridge at home? For me, that one is easy, but the priorities of the federal government and the Congress do not reflect that judgment.

Another infrastructure question that troubles me is that every time we have a storm, trees fall and take down wires. If we made the investment necessary to put the wires underground we wouldn't have the regular problem of thunder, snow or ice storms cutting them, making families go without electricity sometimes for days before expensive repairs take place. That, too, wouldn't cost anything by comparison to the price of our two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and some Washington types are itching to get us into a new pointless war with Iran.

Another major problem was pushed in our faces again last week as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a startling rise in the rate of obesity among Americans. It reached 30 percent or more last year in nine American states -- 72.5 million of us, 26.7 percent of the population, are obese.

Put aside the horrendous rise in medical costs this phenomenon entails, think simply of the misery and likely earlier deaths of all those people, whose risk of suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease and cancer goes up with each pound they add. Then realize that the means of dealing with the problem lies in the hands of virtually every one of them -- first, diet; then, exercise.

Some of the problem gets put down to ignorance. That is truly no excuse in this day and age when even alleged fat-palaces like our fast-food restaurants plaster their walls with material about the healthy foods they offer. It is not in the slightest necessary to join a pricey fitness center to exercise either. Get up off the couch and take a walk!

There is no excuse for getting fat and incurring the risks of obesity. It doesn't even cost money to fix the problem, but we don't. The nearest of the nine porkiest states was West Virginia, in southwestern Pennsylvania's backyard.

Other problems I put in the category of serious include our propensity as a nation to engage in unnecessary wars, our continued insane spending as our national debt tops $13 trillion and our budget deficits -- the amount we spend each year that we don't have, that we have to borrow from China, the Arabs, Japan and Europe -- stretch on into the unforeseeable future, without end.

I guess the corruption and venality of our federal, state and local government officials has been a phenomenon forever and we have grown to accept it, but I find it particularly a problem in need of being dealt with at a time when we have very high unemployment and an alarming number of Americans' homes continuing to be foreclosed upon, making people homeless sometimes as well as jobless.

Instead of worrying about these serious issues, though, we tend to focus on trivia. Now, if we also thought about the serious problems and sought means of dealing with them, I guess it wouldn't bother me so much that we like to follow stories about the lighter stuff. However, I have the feeling they are "in place of" rather than "in light relief to" the real issues.

One example of a favorite topic is Bristol Palin. She is engaged to, then she kicks out, then she is re-engaged to, then she re-kicks out Levi Johnston. We -- including me -- don't miss a beat.

Another piece of trivia is, will Ben Roethlisberger be restored to grace after six games, four games or sooner? After all, he hasn't been accused of sexually assaulting anyone for months! We could fill an exercise pool with the amount of ink that will be devoted to that topic over the coming weeks.

Yet another piece of trivia is the question of whether people should be allowed to carry guns in the open or not. I do not consider all National Rifle Association members to be paranoid nut-jobs. I do not, however, understand how they can avoid seeing a relationship between the number of guns floating around our society and periodic slaughters such as the one last week in Manchester, Conn.

Then there are other subjects that get chewed to tastelessness, such as the children of illegal immigrants, gay marriage, the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the Bush tax cuts, vampires and werewolves, and the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding.

I tell myself "we will survive," although I wish I were sure. In the meantime it is grist for the mill. Write on. Be glad it isn't all heavy.

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