Wanderingvets.com

Once upon a time in America there were a sense of trust  by Americans. In return this trust was honored by doing the right thing for Americans throughout many aspects of our society. Corporate America valued loyalty in their employees and many people rest assured that if they did their job, represented their companies in good faith , employers could be trusted to value their employees with job security. There once were people in government who placed the needs of the people at the forefront of their agendas. Americans could place trust in our government representatives to make Americans the benefactors of their efforts. There was a day in this country when religious organizations provided a place where Americans could find sanctuary away from the harshness of so many troubles in the world that was free of judgement and biases.  Once upon a time we took care of our fellow Americans. Yes,there once was a time in America when we had the collective belief that trust was something worth gaining and that we trusted others to do the right thing for other people.

America has lost trust in many institutions within our country. It’s easy to do when we have seen so many breaches of trust within the past year in the headlines? Americans have been bombarded with incidences of misplaced trust at an alarming rate: rising loss of jobs and the highest unemployment rates since the great depression, corporate bailouts that include hefty bonuses for the CEOs of failing companies, and recently a Congress that passed an economic stimulus package that knowingly included funds for employee bonuses of companies accepting federal funding while so many Americans slip deeper into economic hardships.

There is  objective data that supports my opinon regarding our trust in America. The General Social Survey (GSS) is the largest project funded by the Sociology Program of the National Science Foundation. Except for the U.S. Census, the GSS is the most frequently analyzed source of information in the social sciences.

Americans Losing Their Faith in Faith … And Everything Else has compiled the data from the recent GSS surveys and provides it in user friendly graphs .  The bottom line for this survey?  Americans place little faith in corporations,the media,financial institutions and the executive branch of government and organized religion.

And who does America place the most trust in????

The only major institution to have gained a statistically significant about of trust since 2000 is the military, which is now the most trusted major institution in the country . The gain came as a result, presumably, of 9/11, with the number of Americans expressing a great deal of confidence in the military shooting up from 41 percent in 2000 to 57 percent in 2002. The figure peaked at 59 percent in 2004 and has fallen slightly since, but the rating was slightly higher in 2008 than it had been in 2006 before the Iraq conflict had begun to wind down.

Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the military is the most trusted insitution in America when 25% of all homeless citizens are veterans ?  Does this seem justified with an  unprecedented number of our military are returning home to face injury related illness that put them at risk for becoming homeless? To date the Veteran’s Administration has not been able to provide basic food and shelter for a rising number of homeless veterans in our country….these veterans are left to navigate the other shelters and social services within our communities. During President’s Obama campaign acknowledgement of the problem with homelessness among our Veterans was voiced …to date there has not been an update on what the current administration has done to  get our homeless Veterans off the streets.

For all the men and woman of our military  ,I truly want to believe that this trust in our military is not misplaced.  For all the homeless veterans out there,I hope this trust is something that we can gain back by doing the right thing for each veteran who is in need. For all Americans, I hope that government,corporations and individuals can honor the obligation of doing the right thing for other Americans that leads to trust once again.

Once upon a time in this country trust was honored.