our institutions’
slumping public confidence
yet to recover
Reading the article, How a Pandemic Malaise Is Shaping American Politics, (Sub headed … Four years later, the shadow of the pandemic continues to play a profound role in voters’ pessimism and distrust amid a presidential rematch) By Lisa Lerer, Jennifer Medina and Reid J. Epstein, the in the New York Times on Sunday, March 24th, I was struck by the paragraph:
Public confidence in institutions — the presidency, public schools, the criminal justice system, the news media, Congress — slumped in surveys in the aftermath of the pandemic and has yet to recover. The pandemic hardened voter distrust in government, a sentiment Mr. Trump and his allies are using to their advantage. Fears of political violence, even civil war, are at record highs, and rankings of the nation’s happiness at record lows. And views of the nation’s economy and confidence in the future remain bleak, even as the country has defied expectations of a recession.
I had just read
We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society by
Kenan Malik in the Guardian and Mr. Malik writes:
There is a deeper issue, too: the tendency to individualise social issues, whether poverty or unemployment, to view them as psychological dispositions or even as moral failure.
As I understand it, we don’t trust anything or anyone and we blame ourselves.
No Haiku For You 