They’re All Bad
Our general mood these days, I fear, is that average citizens don’t trust anyone in a position of power. It’s not just limited to government and public officials, although that’s the worst of it. The distrust now extends to anyone in a position of authority…in private businesses, sports, education, you name it.
Polling tends to support that belief. Favorability ratings for a lot of elected officials are lower than ever, and that’s regardless of office or political party affiliation. Basically we’ve become conditioned to not like, or not trust whoever is in the role.
Assuming that is the case, perhaps we’re the ones with the problem. Perhaps it’s our own expectations that are not terribly realistic.
Alright, thought I’d try. The problem is that we’ve been disappointed so often in political performance when we’ve had low expectations…you really can’t blame us for putting “unsatisfied” as our default setting on such things.
But it is true that in a world with 70 kinds of milk at the grocery store, delivery of items bought on line overnight, and the ability to convey your feelings on any topic to the whole world instantly thanks to a tiny computer you also can make a call on…we don’t understand why anything takes time, why nuance is important, or why we can’t get our own way right now.
So let’s try an experiment…the next time we criticize someone, perhaps first determine if our own expectations for the outcome were realistic. It will at least give us a more accurate assessment of the situation.
