Posted on 11/30/2013 9:44:22 AM PST by Olog-hai
You can take our word for it. Americans don’t trust each other anymore.
We’re not talking about the loss of faith in big institutions such as the government, the church or Wall Street, which fluctuates with events. For four decades, a gut-level ingredient of democracy—trust in the other fellow—has been quietly draining away.
These days, only one third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question. …
An AP-GfK poll conducted last month found that Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters. Less than one third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards, drivers on the road, or people they meet when traveling. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Well surprise surprise.
After decades for pitting men against women; black against white; rich against poor; culture against culture; they have finally noticed that Civil Society is less civil.
Throw in Multiculturalism and the removal of God from the Public Square; it’s amazing we have anything is common at all.
Why wouldn’t we trust people? What with all the tolerance gestapo, identity thieves, craigslist kidnappers, Sharkeishas, date rapists, fraudsters, SNAP card thugs, political operatives, CPS workers stealing people’s kids from hospitals, pedophiles, leftist nutjobs, terrorist professors, Hamas-linked infiltration groups, environazis, Freedom From Religion lawyers, foreigners wanting to take our guns, foreigners wanting to cut our throats, drugged up teenagers, and general douchebags who live for today and screw everyone else.
People in America today seem like a really trustworthy bunch. No, I’ll keep my magnum within reach of the front door thanks.
They’re just finding that out? They needed a survey?
Is it any surprise there is a lack of trust after 66 million low-lifes voted for Traitorobama and a Demonrat party that supported the murder-by-abortion of 55 million unborn children?
But since that's not possible, the problem is laid at the feat of... "Americans."
I don't know about trusting my neighbors, but I certainly don't trust the Associated Press.
No sane person trusts the government or the press. They deserve no respect.
Hi, I’m Bernie Madoff and you can trust me!
Depends on who you have as a god.
We didn't trust because it felt good, we trusted because we weren't getting ripped off by every liar and his power crazed wife (think Clinton)...
In 1972 Hollywood hadn't fully glorified lowlifes - and we were allowed to have standards for our kids without looking like ‘squares’ or ‘teabaggers’... Liberals wanted to be ‘edgy’ - - that only works if they're ‘of the few’... but when everyone’s a lowlife it quits being cool - and the culture becomes course... and dreadful - and people hide from each other. Bowling alone anyone?
This liberal writer thinks if we all became gullible and let liberals rip us off it would be better, he's wrong. Liberals mugged us, we're not walking down that alley again...
We're not a cohesive culture... we don't have shared values. The values of third world cultures play on an equal footing - or better with the help of liberals who hate the American middle class. That's part of the problem.
That's loss. . The truth is our values have changed.. it's why there's not an open return policy in stores anymore. It's why in a few years there won't be any return policy. Everyone's ripping off the system - thinking it's cool... ripping off each other ... lying about our risk... All the things liberals have forced on the culture. One more reason to hate liberals.
If people DID trust in God then they’d be more amicable towards one another too.
Yes there are problems with “God and the public square” but some of them are due to outdated assumptions about WHO has the responsibility to bring God to the public square.
Well now we know we can’t look to our government to do it and that’s good news in a way. It brings us away from a view of government as a priesthood. When the government could plausibly wrap itself in the pages of the bible, we gave it a reverence that it, often, didn’t deserve.
Let a thousand private Christmas lights shine. In the public square as they walk around in it. Then we won’t care so much that city hall didn’t put a manger scene there this December.
The America of the 1940s and 1950s saw most people believe in the bedrock of the society they had built - marriage, family, schools, government. Only those considered on the outside (communists, descendents of WWII opponents) had our suspicion.
Today, these bedrock elements have been largely destroyed and the communists run our country. When presidents make promises they knew they couldn’t keep, they really have no place to stand when they criticize people who mistrust government.
I think the proliferation of crime television also hurts our trust factor in our fellow man.
Don’t sell all the third world countries short.
Some of them are getting on the spiritual up and up. In the long term that will favor saner economic policies.
But if someone had told you that in a few decades that, say, Ethiopia would have more class than the USA... would you have believed it?
I don’t think people were more trustworthy in 1972. That was the era of Richard J Dailey, Serpico and Watergate, just to name some very high profile corruption. You’re also talking the height of the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and a few other nuts. Really everything you’re saying is terrible now was just as much if not more so then.
And we’ve never really had a cohesive culture. America is a big country with lots of different setups and climates. City people- country people, Eastern people - Western people, snowbelt people - sunbelt people. All are vastly different groups with different values. And have been for a long time. In the era of 3 TV networks we learned how to pretend America was a mono-culture but that was always a lie. Anybody that think America is (or ever was) a mono-culture needs to explain what BBQ is, what you call a bubbly caffeinated beverage, and what you call a cold cut sandwich on a french foll.
Recognition of God tended to be far more lukewarm than it had to be. That’s my $0.02 worth of observation. Enthusiasm was not a thing for polite churches to have. That was considered fringe behavior, not worthy of Mr. and Mrs. Average.
I think that now the norms have fallen by the boards, there is now an opportunity for evangelical faith to reappear without those traditional shames. If Mr. and Mrs. Average shout hallelujahs all day long, who’s going to think it so odd any more when America won’t even think it’s odd to have two daddies?
God got more lip service back then. You could count on the submarine, hoagie, or grinder eaters, and the pop, soda, or coke drinkers, to all pretty much agree what God was about even if their allegiance to Him was observed more in the breach.
Its like the old saying,”In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash”!
Kind of. 1962 would have been a better benchmark. In 1972 people were deathly afraid of rioters, hippies, druggies, hitchhikers, and killers who picked up hitchhikers.
The people who took a survey in 1972 probably would have grown up in a less stressful era, though, and might have kept some of their trustworthy nature over the years.
The media has worked very hard for decades for this very result.
Maybe just lip service but probably not allegiance and certainly definition. You’d have Catholics and Jews and Baptists and different levels of dedication all the way to lapsed and ex.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.