We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

Robin Wright, in an excellent yet disturbing article in The New Yorker, laments the precipitous decline of trust among Americans. That confidence in the legitimacy of American institutions has eroded is not exactly news: Vietnam and Watergate started the slide in the 1960s and 1970s. But something else is in play, according to Wright, something far more ominous:

American experience is in real trouble — more than at any time in at least a half century — and that there’s no one out there to help us. Reflecting on . . . [Barack Obama’s] Facebook comment, Paul Waldman, of…