American Dissatisfaction With Everything Is Reaching Historic Levels
Kasey Varner
HuffingtonPost.com
07/03/2014
WASHINGTON — People are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore, an extensive new survey of public attitudes toward the government finds.
The study, conducted by EMC Research, relies on three in-depth surveys in late 2013, one by telephone and two on the Internet. When lined up with historical trends on dissatisfaction and alienation, it shows a public that has become increasingly distrustful of the government over the past several decades. Only the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks interrupted that trend, briefly rallying people around their leaders. Within just a few years, that feeling had faded, and faith in government and politicians returned to its steady decline.
The man behind the latest study is Patrick Caddell, who found similar, if less intense, levels of alienation as the pollster for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in the early 1970s. McGovern used Caddell’s finding to launch an outsider bid to claim the primary, before going on to lose to Richard Nixon. Caddell went on to find deep distrust within the American people in subsequent years, advising President Jimmy Carter to give his famous “malaise” speech less than a decade later. Caddell is now a regular Fox News contributor.
True, neither McGovern’s campaign nor Carter’s speech was noted for its popular success at the time. But Caddell thinks the dissatisfaction that was building then among Americans may finally demand action.
While today’s disaffection is partly due to the economy, Caddell argues that something deeper is going on. Two-thirds of the survey’s respondents felt that they have no say in government, with 73 percent believing the government does not rule with the consent of the people.
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