Broken Trust: A Man-made Disaster Affecting American Citizens

Americans are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because government and business leaders have failed their mandate.  A mandate to be ethical and moral in decision making.  A failure of this mandate breaks the trust that Americans have in American leadership.  Trust is built on faith and without faith in American leadership, Americans are less and less secure with their position individually as well as their position as an American citizen in the global marketplace.

Using the terms morals and ethics can create a lightening rod effect, especially when religion is pulled into the mix.  That is not the purpose of this writing.  Morals and ethics are not the sole property of religious groups.  Morals and ethics are the property of all people regardless of religious persuasion.  Religion has been used as a divisive tool to create differences in an effort to indicate superiority.  Atheists have the same potential to have moral and ethical behavior as a Christian, Jew, or Muslim.  Thus, the ultimate determination of what is moral and ethical behavior is one of an individual decision making process.

And that is what makes the broken trust of Americans such a devastating man-made disaster.  There is no law against breaking the trust of Americans.  The U.S. has criminal law and contract law that make some inroads for Americans to vindicate their rights, but that is not what is being discussed here.  President Obama promised "change".  Banks promised "security".  Financial services promised "safety".  U.S. Congress promised "advocacy".  By no means is this an exhaustive list, however it does provide a big picture for what Americans are dealing with.  The government affects the daily life of Americans.  Businesses affect the daily life of Americans.  It is pervasive because there is not an aspect of life that the government or businesses do not touch.  Americans are dependent on both thereby creating a captive audience, which is losing more and more control.

Losing control feeds into victimhood.  The control Americans have lost is the ability to be factored into the decision making of government and business leaders.  The short term vision for the government is reelection.  The short term vision for businesses is profit.  Unfortunately, trust is a long term process that is destroyed by short term actions.  It is not too aggressive to say that the trust of Americans has been destroyed.  That is the current state of affairs for Americans and the reason why there is no easy solution to what seems to be an individual problem.  The government and businesses have violated their "duty of care" and "duty of loyalty" to Americans.  The class action suit would include all Americans and standing would be found.

Alas, there is no such action for Americans, therefore Americans will turn to voting in an attempt to pull back some control only to be disappointed again because it is illusory.