Quasi-Political Trust

Most people are exposed to the same principals and agents of political socialization. Families spread values that support political authorities and can heavily contribute to children's initial political ideological views, or party preferences. Families influence political knowledge and identification depending on variables such as family demographics, life cycle, parenting style, parental level of political skepticism and frequency of political discussions. Demographics such as gender and age also attribute to political socialization. School is another agent of political socialization. Spending numerous years in school, children in the United States are taught and reinforced a view of the world that their text books tell them to trust. Through primary, secondary and high schools, students are taught key principles such as individual rights and property, personal responsibility and duty to their nation. Another is mass media. Mass media is not only a source of political information; it is an influence on political values and beliefs. Various media outlets, through news coverage and late-night programs, provide different partisan policy stances that are associated with political participation. Religions, beliefs, and practices play a role in political opinion formation and political participation. The perspective offered by religious institutions shape judgement regarding public policy, and political decision

I have not had much interest in politics until recently. Before last year, I did not care for anything related to politics; I thought that it was all boring and had little to no affect on me on a personal level. I am more interested in politics nowadays. I know better now that it does affect me and I should care about it. I had learned about the concepts of political socialization, party identification, political tolerance, political trust, political efficacy in government class and how they affect my political beliefs. My personal political belief has been shaped into what it is today and is still being shaped because of those six concepts.

Many scholars believe that falling civic organization membership and the general decline in our Social Capital has negatively impacted voter turnout.” (Kaufmann. 145) To summarize, people in the United States are “less involved” with other groups and other people as a whole, so it is only logical to feel they would be less involved or interest in our political and governmental future.

Elissa Nunez of NBC News reports that 64% of Americans believe that the big money in politics discourages many great candidates from running (Nunez). On top of this number, 76% of people believe that "money has a greater influence on politics and elected officials today than in the past," (Nunez). These numbers lead to a fundamental issue in our government; a huge distrust in our federal government. Only a month after 9/11, 60% of citizens said they could trust the federal government, however, following the Iraq war and an economic downturn the number dropped to a mere 24% in 2007

     Secondly, trusting our government and its leaders is another problem facing American in the 21st century. In “The Circle of Governments” Niccolo Machiavelli states, “As the human race increased, the necessity for uniting themselves for defense made itself felt; the better to attain this object they chose the strongest and most courageous from amongst themselves and placed him at their head promising to obey him.”(230). I take this statement to mean that ever since the beginning of time we have

In the past century, people continued to express an increasingly discontent view of Congress especially true when one looks back before the Clinton Impeachment debacle As the size of the nation and the number of congressman have grown, the congress has come under attack by both public influences and congressman themselves. Yet looking at one congressman's relationship with his or her constituents, it would be hard to believe that this is the branch of government that has come under suspect. In "If Ralph Nader says congress is 'The broken branch,' how come we love our congressman so much?" author Richard F. Fenno, Jr., provides insight into this view and why, through congress coming under fire, constituents still feel positively about

The wooden-headedness in our government, which was originally supposed to be trustworthy and dependable, shows how wooden-headedness has infiltrated our organizations, where it now plays a huge role in human

Popular culture also plays a role in why Americans do not trust politicians. Late-night television shows use politicians in their comedy skits, where their mistakes are punch lines for

There are many of us who are disillusioned by the American Political system, over the years we have become increasingly cynical, viewing politicians as extensions of Corporate America, the good OLE boys from the South and the Eastern Elite. For such politicians, politics itself was a life long destiny, full of ambition, finesse, and struggle for power, yet a severe lack

I began to mistrust government when politicians increasingly began to lie to get elected with a positive agenda that would help support the community and nation, but when in office they never fulfilled their promises in which they campaigned on such as, New York’s senator Tim Bishop using funds provided by prominent hedge fund investors to personally influence their agendas once they would provide money to his campaign. Compared to the public in 2010, I can poll my mistrust in government at roughly seventy-five percent which matches the public view of government at the time when stated they only trusted the government only some of the

Many people developed a distrust in their government. Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor states, “When the smoke cleared in the Watergate scandal, we had been blatantly lied to by our highest officials. That changed us.” Daniel P. Finney, a reporter for USA Today says, “It [Watergate] dented Americans’ faith in their government and tainted public servants with a distrust.” Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University states, “The myth of the president as always a great, trustful, moral leader ended.”

Could “ordinary Americans” accomplish a better a job of solving national problems than government officials? Study polls show that over the course of years the trust that Americans had in the government has slowly diminished. This change is the government’s fault. Someone doesn’t want to install their trust in somebody else who is not truthful. Americans should not trust government officials because they are not always truthful, treat citizens like criminals, and they are not doing anything that truly make America “better”.

Everyday citizens often live unaware of their government’s inner workings. The knowing of political espionage is often too heavy of a subject to be inducted in conversation. True, prima facie, modest twists and turns of information may not be considered substantial, but this inconsideration leaves much to be uncontrolled. It is easy for political leaders to become power crazed, to not realize the massive implications that come of their actions. Only after all is said and done do the people actually realize their government is an opaque mask of deception. The Watergate Scandal substantially impacted Americans’ trust in their government.

In “Bowling Alone”, Robert Putnam speaks primarily of America’s declining activity in civil society and social meetings. His arguments are backed with facts in statistics- he often lists membership levels in different organizations, and how they’ve declined in a number of years by (typically) a drastic percentage. One example in the civic society portion that stood out to me was actually quite short and minor. Putnam wrote that "the portion of who reply that they “trust the government in Washington” only “some of the time” or “almost never” has risen steadily from 30 percent in 1966 to 75 percent in 1992.”(Putnam, Robert D. “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy, Jan. 1995, pp. 65–78.) This was a distinct moment in the article for me because in our society today, I feel as though this percentage has probably increased in our country, especially amongst the younger generation who has

Although our nation’s government relies on the fundamentals of liberal democracy, it still has many flaws. Articles written by Francis Fukuyama share a clear message suggesting that America’s political institutions are decaying and its flaws will not be fixed unless we have good leadership within the government that yields good policies. It is still not too late to make reformations in the system. Today, US citizens share a distrust for the inner workings of our government, and through the years, there are many things that must change. Although our government is able to withstand failures right now, it may cause an expansion of problems that will cost us indefinitely. The existence of interest groups has caused an exponential increase in the elite control of the system, thus creating people’s lack of trust for the government.