So Who Do YOU Trust?

We've heard it so many times now, it’s a wonder that it even rates a headline. Americans confidence in all three branches of government are at an all time low. This with the announcement that the Supreme Court’s popularity has fallen to a record low of only 30%, the lowest since the Gallup pole started tracking it in 1973. Fortunately for the justices the legislative branch takes the price with only a 7% approval rating. And they wonder why so many Americans are buying record numbers of guns and hording every bit of ammunition they can find. People have simply lost faith, are losing hope, and are hunkering down, getting ready for God only knows what. If ever the tea leaves pointed to the American version of an “arab spring”, this certainly is starting to look a lot like it.

Granted, the Supreme Court isn't about winning popularity contests but, considering some of the court’s rulings over the past decade, it really cannot come to anyone’s surprise. It’s one thing for the court to tackle an extremely difficult case with lots of intimate details that the everyday person won’t fully understand, but when cases are decided against what even the simplest person can see as a common sense ruling, you really have to wonder if anyone bothered to tell the new justices that impartiality isn’t just a nice habit, it is a necessity for the court to be respected, understood, and appreciated by every citizen as “the highest court in the land”.

And if all this political non-sense isn’t enough, just look at our own general population. Look at the surveys of how many young adults say it’s OK to lie? As a culture, we accept that every politician lie’s, but why? Why aren’t our legislatures passing laws to stop this, or better yet, why aren’t we the people demanding it end? Has it simply become so easy to do that we simply accept it and never demand the truth? Most importantly, how does this affect who you actually trust and of course, what do you base that trust upon? For fun, just google the words “lies, Lying” and see how many hits, news stories, research results, etc you get. Simply astonishing! Oh yes, my favorite was the statement that in 1 out of 3 couples, one spouse admits to lying to their partner about money …. Really? Only 1 of 3 …. Shocking that there is so much truth about money. Wonder if there is a direct correlation to the claim that the divorce rate is now 50% or 1 in 2 …. Hmmmmm, apparently some of these couples are lying about more than money! In a recent NPR survey, more and more older couples are divorcing later in life because they are finding that after the kids are gone, they simply don’t have anything else in common. Wow, now there’s a breech in trust, particularly since all that time they had time to create more commonalities. Now days people over 50 are twice as likely to divorce as those 20 years younger.

So, you can’t trust your government, our politicians, your spouse and probably not your kids …. So who do you trust? But maybe the real question is, how do you find trust, keep trust, and believe in trust? Or maybe it’s a lot simpler … do you ever talk about trust with other people? Do you talk about how important it is and what happens when it’s lost.

You know, since our lives became so full of television, computers, games, music and all those other distractions we don’t seem to have really meaningful conversations any longer. When is the last time you told your significant other just “why” you love them?

Perhaps you've just found the first step in trust, now get moving, you’ve got to get back on that beaten path!