This is a revolutionary situation; or could be, if people stop to think about it.
Hence the slo-mo crackdown on the Internet, the crackpot propaganda tarring Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein as "Russian trolls," the militarization of police (who won't be giving up *their * AR-15s), and other signs of elite desperation. MCM >From the Pew Research Center, November, 2015: Trust in government: 1958-2015 http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/ The public’s trust in the federal government continues to be at historically low levels. Only 19% of Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (3%) or “most of the time” (16%). [image: Trust - 1] <http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015>Fewer than three-in-ten Americans have expressed trust in the federal government in every major national poll conducted since July 2007 – the longest period of low trust in government in more than 50 years. In 1958, when the American National Election Study first asked this question, 73% said they could trust the government just about always or most of the time. The erosion of public trust in government began in the 1960s. The share saying they could trust the federal government to do the right thing nearly always or most of the time reached an all-time high of 77% in 1964. Within a decade – a period that included the Vietnam War, civil unrest and the Watergate scandal – trust had fallen by more than half, to 36%. By the end of the 1970s, only about a quarter of Americans felt that they could trust the government at least most of the time. Trust in government rebounded in the 1980s before falling in the early to mid-1990s. But as the economy boomed in the late 1990s, confidence in government increased. And in 2001, the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States transformed public attitudes on a range of issues <http://www.people-press.org/2002/03/07/public-opinion-six-months-later/> – including trust in government. In early October 2001, a month after the attacks, 60% said they could trust the government, roughly double the share earlier that year and the highest percentage expressing trust in government in more than 40 years. But the rise in government trust was short-lived – by the summer of 2002, the share saying they could trust the government had tumbled 22 percentage points. Amid the war in Iraq and economic uncertainty at home, trust in government continued to decline. By July 2007, trust had fallen to 24%. Since then, the share saying they can trust the federal government has generally fluctuated in a narrow range, between 20% and 25%. *snip>* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. If you'd like to donate to News From Underground, please visit http://markcrispinmiller.com/donate - we appreciate your ongoing support. Ways to unsubscribe, 1) send a blank email to newsfromunderground+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. PLEASE NOTE: you must unsubscribe using the SAME email with which you subscribed; 2) go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com
