Many of us don’t vote in local elections and hold politicians in low regard. As for doctors, lawyers, churches, journalists, big business, teachers, technology companies and probably our next-door neighbors, polls show that we don’t have much faith in them, either.
We’ve become a nation of cynics, and decades of Gallup polls show how mired we are in this muck. In 1979, public confidence of key institutions stood at 48% and held near 45% during the 1980s. During the 1990s and early 2000s, confidence fell to around 40%. Public confidence continued to plummet, dropping to the low 30% in the 2010s, to below 30% last year and to 26% this year.
So how cynical can this nation become? We dread to imagine.
We know this much, however. Democratic societies can’t function productively when upwards of 70% of citizens think their nation is doing very little right and accept dysfunction as inevitable when key institutions and leaders fail to live up to their purpose and promise.
But as the saying goes, “If you don’t believe in something, you’ll fall for anything.” In the absence of a credible foundation, angry social media, our prejudices, predispositions and fading trust undercut opportunities to agree to disagree with civility or address societal challenges.
According to a recent Gallup poll conducted in June, public confidence fell in seven of the 16 institutions that the polling annually tracks, and either held steady at an extremely low level or barely improved, a sign that our fractured nation isn’t healing. Many major institutions measured in the poll scored confidence levels below 30%, hovering near or at their all-time-low score, Gallup reports.
Medicine and organized religion, for example, scored an unimpressive 34% and 32%, respectively, and the U.S. Supreme Court, banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies and organized labor all scored in the mid-20s.
But it can get worse. Media, the criminal justice system, big business and Congress posted confidence scores under 20%. Not surprisingly, Congress inspired confidence in just 8% of those polled, the only institution to score in single digits.
Polarization and mistrust did not begin in Congress or in the outsized reach of social media. The way out of the wilderness requires both, as well as education, business, media, law and other institutions, to pursue substance over drama, reward solutions over attention and advance truth over knowingly false narratives.
Our institutions represent a higher, collective public purpose and provide checks on excesses that would otherwise diminish a democratic society. Americans must rekindle faith and trust in the key institutions that once made our nation stronger and more cohesive. Our future depends on it.
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