A healthy distrust of authority has been built into America's DNA since the nation's inception. Considering how the country came about to be a sovereign state this is entirely understandable. However, in recent years Americans have trusted the government less and less, which has created some problems that could have dire consequences. This historical lack of trust in government can be seen in everything from our culture and media as well as in the institutions we have created in the country. In our media, particularly in film and television the underdog is almost always the protagonist while the more powerful and authoritative force is the antagonist. This dynamic can also be seen in our political system, which is set up in such a way that no branch of the government holds an inordinate amount of power. In addition, each state in the country is autonomous to a certain extent, which is not the case in such countries such as France, where different states are simply subsections of the national government and have no autonomy.
Even given these cultural features of America, the country had relatively high level of trust in the government after the conclusion of the Second World War. In the 1960s over 70% of Americans said they trusted the government, since then this number has seen a sharp drop however. In 2015 only 19% of Americans said that they trusted the government and saw it as working towards the betterment of the people in the country.
There are a number of events that could have triggered this precipitous drop off in the faith of the American people. Certain controversial events like Watergate and the Vietnam War bitterly divided the American public and led to a feeling of animosity towards the government that hadn’t been seen since before the second world war. Certain high profile controversies like the MK Ultra tests and the Tuskeegee experiments then called into question whether the government truly strived to better the lives of the American public. In the 21st century there have been events on both sides of the aisle that have angered the American public, such as the countries involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under what some saw as false pretenses, and email server scandal of Hillary Clinton.
So now that we know Americans trust the government less, what are its effects? One factor we can look at is partisanship. In times where the people distrust the government they tend to distrust opposing parties even more than the government as a whole. This leads to a bitterly entrenched political landscape and a country divided. Another area that a lack of trust in the government advances is that of conspiracy theories. In some cases these are relatively harmless, such as those who believe that the earth is actually flat and the government is covering this fact up through NASA. Others theories however represent very real dangers to the American public. The most notorious one of these is the theory that vaccines cause autism, or are otherwise harmful and dangerous. These theories have lead to higher numbers of cases in certain diseases that have been virtually eradicated for decades.
The government now needs to ask itself how it can go about regaining the trust of the American people. An increase in transparency in government is necessary for this to happen. People like Edward Snowden should not have to leak information in the way he did for the American people to know that the government was monitoring them. The process will be long and there will always be those who don’t trust the government, but it’s clear that our current rend is not sustainable.
