Why 41% Don't Trust the Government

David Brooks
Mark Hosenball

"The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. The country is evenly divided about President Obama, but state governments are in disrepute and confidence in Congress is at withering lows. Third, the new administration has not galvanized a popular majority."  - David Brooks

"Politicians can’t seem to tell the difference between wasteful spending and investments in a more sustainable future... If America can’t change, then the current state of decline is bound to continue. You can’t have a healthy economy with so many millions of people out of work, and there is no plan now that would result in the creation of millions of new jobs any time soon."  - Bob Herbert

Over the past 40 years, we have been building informal cultural traditions that are against our government. During the 1960's and '70's the counter-culture began, first protesting the War in Vietnam, then growing as the popularity in rock music and recreational drug use grew also.  The message was to drop out of the government approved society and create another one based on more self sufficient methods. Also, the popular notion of spying and infiltration, that "Big Brother" was watching, became a popular note of paranoia. Unfortunately, those paranoid delusions, that put many in mental institutions at the time, turned out to be all too real...

At the same time, anti-social groups also became popularized, from outlaw biker gangs to inner-city ghetto gangs, all using the making and selling of drugs as the source of income and pride. In rural areas, you had self sufficient individuals who created their own social fabric, and the government was seen as an intruder in their lives, only coming in and telling them what they can't do and then having to pay for not allowing it...

Now we have the results of several generations that have grown up wary of government laws, taxes, and restrictions. Add to the mix immigrants who fled from repressive regimes, and you get a large percentage of the population with a negative view of the government. Add again, the greed and lust for power nakedly expressed by politicians, who consistently get busted for accepting bribes,using tax money to travel all over the world, have endless sex scandals, a corrupt way of getting bills passed, and arrogantly ignoring the people who elected them, and we have even more distrust and cynicism of the political process.

Throw in the last eight years of the Bush presidency, ruled by conservative right wingers, who proved that despite all of their rhetoric, they end up lying to the public, accept more bribes than any group ever before, create inept policies, get us into needless wars, ruin the economy, cause me to lose my job and my house, have proven that they cannot and should not be allowed to run this country. Still, they insist that lowering taxes for the rich is the solution to all of these problems; what a sorry bunch of losers we have that are still in Congress.

Although Barack Obama inspired hope and promised change, once he got into the White House he found that the corrupt process of making laws guaranteed that change was going to be next to impossible. Not only were those sorry bunch of losers whining even louder, hoping that if you say negative things enough times that people will come to believe you because the average citizens are so dumb, but those dumb people watched the circus on television and in the newspapers, and on the Internet in greater depth and detail than ever before, and may now make up the majority who no longer have faith in the american version of democracy. You know, the version that we are trying to cram down the world's throat...

As we enter into a new year, all of these disparate elements are working against each other and are expressing themselves rather chaotically. Because they all have a basic mistrust of government, I doubt if they will ever organize enough to offer an honest and reasonable candidate. I liked Ron Paul until I saw him on C-Span addressing the national John Birch rally, and I had thought that these wackos had disbanded years ago. As a moderate, I am looking for a balanced person who will listen to opposing views both to the right and the left, and who does not pander, is calm in the face of an emergency, and willing to explain his decisions in clear, simple language. Weirdly enough, the only person on the political scene who seems to be doing all of that is our President, Barack Obama. His mistakes are relatively minor, he is a loving family man, and is someone I could sit down and have a beer with.

Over the next couple of years his ratings will go up, and hopefully, he will inspire a new generation of politicians who refuse to do politics the old way, and maybe we will see a couple of other political parties rise up to replace the corrupt dinosaur that has sadly become the Republican Party. RIP... And hopefully, there will be enough change in how the government does its job that some of those cultural groups will change their distrust. But what do I know, maybe it's just more fun being an outlaw...

Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks

Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such...

• Funniest comment this morning came from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, when he said that it looks like we won't be sending anymore Guantanamo prisoners to Yemen...

• In Mexico the drug wars rage on, cartel fighting cartel over turf, and police against all cartels: "Despite the government's deployment of 49,000 troops across Mexico in its war on drugs, broad daylight shootings are common and killings by drug gangs soar to an unprecedented 7,000 last year alone."

• NASA has found five more planets, we need the next generation of Hubble telescopes...

• 1.6 million children die globally every year from diarrheal disease, 90 percent of their illness caused by problems with sanitation, drinking water and hygiene.

• From the Angry Arab: "There is a war going on that you don't hear about: between the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment and the Shi`ite religious establishment in Iraq. Iraqi puppet prime minister yesterday entered the fray by criticizing the Saudi religious establishment and praising the Shi`ite religious establishment. In US media, Maliki is still described as "secular."