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Dulcinea

(6,659 posts)
Wed Jan 17, 2018, 10:37 AM Jan 2018

Here's Just How Little Confidence Americans Have In Political Institutions

The institutions that have been the pillars of U.S. politics and capitalism are crumbling.

That is one finding from the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, which shows Americans have limited confidence in its public schools, courts, organized labor and banks — and even less confidence in big business, the presidency, the political parties and the media.

The only institution that Americans have overwhelming faith in is the military — 87 percent say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military. That is a striking change from the 1970s during and after the Vietnam War.

In 1977, according to Gallup, 57 percent had that same level of confidence in the military, 30 points lower. There have been some big changes in the last 40 years, including the draft being abolished and fewer and fewer Americans knowing someone serving in the military.

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/17/578422668/heres-just-how-little-confidence-americans-have-in-political-institutions

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Here's Just How Little Confidence Americans Have In Political Institutions (Original Post) Dulcinea Jan 2018 OP
This poll is so dispiriting and disturbing to me. Ferrets are Cool Jan 2018 #1
Too narrow a perspective. Igel Jan 2018 #2
ugh topnotch62907 Jan 2018 #3

Ferrets are Cool

(21,109 posts)
1. This poll is so dispiriting and disturbing to me.
Wed Jan 17, 2018, 12:46 PM
Jan 2018

We have become what Eisenhower warned against so eloquently.

"As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow"

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together"

I frightens me greatly that America has more confidence in a military-industrial complex than it does in our educational or labor forces.

Igel

(35,337 posts)
2. Too narrow a perspective.
Wed Jan 17, 2018, 04:12 PM
Jan 2018
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/SocialTrust.pdf

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/americans-divided-on-how-much-they-trust-their-neighbors/

https://ourworldindata.org/trust

That just looks at social trust, one aspect of social capital.

There's a large body of research relating levels of social trust to trust in institutions, to the state of civil society (which is not to be defined as primarily large civil institutions like the ACLU, however much such groups like such self-aggrandizing definitions), litigation, the economy and business structure and growth, crime, etc., etc. The relation isn't one way, by any means, feedback loops are all over the place. Classical liberalism, it's was pointed out long before my grandparents were born, tends to atomize society and destroy trust. At the same time, the framers of liberalism decades before this prediction-as-critique knew this and explicitly claimed that limits to the system would be imposed from without, not from within. Sort of like an super-ego/ego/id set up. Comprehensive welfare systems work in countries with a lot of social trust.

The first response on the part of many when looking at some social trust data is to accuse--to blame others or to say, "Look how much better my group is!" or the equivalent "Look how much worse that group is!" The idea isn't to judge one group, but to identify strengths and weaknesses that can be emulated or ameliorated.

The second response is often to deny what can't be easily (as opposed to merely 'accurately') blamed away. These are often ad hominem attacks or rest on cui bono? At the end it's often tu-quoque, "Yeah, but you're not perfect, either."

But then again, one of the crucial aspects of the lack of social trust is a great reliance on self-defensiveness and an exaggerated suspicion of others. And one great misuse of this research has been its use in gotcha politics, taking one finding and using it as a cudgel against some other view or group. Something that both misses and constitutes the point of the research in a really willfully blind way, and decreases social trust.

Dig into the literature. There's lots to offend everybody. Sadly, I have to admit that even what really offends me is still almost certainly dead-on accurate.

I'd reframe much of the Russian interference in the US election as an overt attempt to decrease social trust. But it only really works when there's already decreased social trust.

Otherwise, social capital is a commons. It can be used and exploited for the benefit of one group, but exploit it too much without building it up and it's destroyed. That can be the military-industrial complex. It can be other groups with other goals. Even the ultimate defense against the MIC wasn't government; it was civil society, which is the foundation of a sound democratic government. But civil society depends on and encourages social trust and constitutes part of social capital. It pays to note that most civil society is non-political. The cactus/succulent society I was in, the community orchestras, youth groups, religious groups, social-work-related groups, weren't organized to feed political or government power. They were organized to help the members or to help others directly, not acquire power. But they certainly helped make political debate civil because the common goal of playing a Corelli concerto grosso in a nursing home, teaching immigrants English, cleaning out a few acres of wetland, or just learning how to germinate Aztekium ritteri seeds or spending a whole weekend lerping provided a common background and link with people that I might never think of as people.
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