FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Americans Now Trust Cops More Than Schools

A new Gallup poll charts Americans’ “confidence” in the various institutions that comprise our little society, and you probably don’t need to bother scanning the results to know what they are. Basically, military/police/church = trusted, Congress...
Image: DVIDSHUB.

A new Gallup poll charts Americans’ “confidence” in the various institutions that comprise our little society, and you probably don’t need to bother scanning the results to know what they are. Basically, military/police/church = trusted, Congress/organized labor/public schools = not so much.

Take a look anyways:

Click for full-size.

There’s lots of weird stuff in there, but the takeaway seems to be this: we distrust our democratic and learning institutions and but do trust our security apparatus, religious leaders, and executive authority. Which is a disturbing place to be.

As Hamilton Nolan quips in Gawker: “‘America: the best at killing, incarcerating, and pacifying people! The worst at educating, informing, and uniting people! America! America! America!’ Not a bad slogan, actually.”

Advertisement

Yep.

Now, a couple commentators have noted that confidence is pretty much declining for institutions across the board, but there’s one big exception to the rule: the military! Here’s a graph from the New York Times’ Catherine Rampell (click through for an interactive version):

Currently, Americans are 8% more confident in the military than the historical average, and it’s still climbing. And even if confidence in everything else is collapsing, it’s still notable that we trust the unelected Supreme Court and our chief executive way more than we do Congress. Congress, after all, is the body we have the greatest ability to influence, and the only thing that’s suffered a steeper decline in American trust are banks. Also notable is the fact that confidence in public schools has dipped to a record low, along with television news. Trust in newspapers is super low too, well below the historical average.

So: No faith in education. Lack of trust in our institutional truth-tellers and muckrakers. No confidence in our democratic bodies. This is how a dystopia is born in every work science fiction ever—democracy erodes, people turn to the military, police and/or religious leaders for security. Voila! Futuristic hellhole.

Just saying.

CONNECTIONS: