Trust: it's being eroded on all fronts and might not exist any longer.

Sort of like "honor", that old-fashioned value that included such things as keeping your word, staying loyal to friends and principles, standing up to bullies for the weaker and for oneself and, above all, having the ability to be embarrassed by deviations from simple ethics and morality.
In foreign policy, the Obamanic-depressives seem hell-bent on humiliating and humbling our friends of the once-special relationship, the Brits, and abandoning our erstwhile allies like the Israelis, the Poles and the Czechs. At the same time, they seem to be sucking up to such as the Iranians and being overly submissive to tyrants like Chavez, the Castros and Kim, even making deep public obeisance to the Guardian of the Two Shrines. At least in being polite to the Chinese ( and ignoring Tibet, Taiwan and Tienamen Square ) there is a recognition that limitless spending and debt makes us beholden to the only party between us and the bottomless printing press of the Fed buying Treasuries. Even the Chinese are complaining about the quality of what they have been purchasing. Others have pointed out the irony of the Chinese sending us low-quality lead-based toys while we send them back low-quality paper. It's like the old characterization of the Soviet workers: "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." The productivity of such a situation might occur within the U.S. as redistribution and taxes sap the willingness to work, invest and create jobs.
Domestically, the situation beggars the imagination of those who thought they knew what system governs the United States.Congress passes spending bills without attention to what the spending is for let alone how it's going to be paid back, kicking the can down the road for enough election cycles so that it won't hurt present members. The Executive exerts its force in the private sector, firing CEOs without any apparent authority to do so, blackmailing bondholders to capitulate to absurd settlements with the threat of libeling them to the public and, with the connivance of Congress, incredibly passing a punitive tax measure to confiscate legal earnings of a small group, made unpopular through public vilification by government figures. Why this wasn't a Bill of Attainder is unclear but no-one seems to care. http://tinyurl.com/cq7b68
George Will, among others, has referred to "the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government."half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.***this used to be known as misappropriation of funds***TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab auto company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."...From Mexico, America ...instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law.Trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose."Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans. Congress, with the...president ...has shredded the North American Free Trade Agreement.Congress used the omnibus spending bill to abolish a program ...with its obligation to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S roads....Mexico has resorted to protectionism — tariffs on many U.S. goods — in retaliation for Democrats' protection of the Teamsters union. NAFTA, like all treaties, is the "supreme law of the land." So says the Constitution. ...Congress...ignoring the document's unambiguous stipulations that the House shall be composed of members chosen "by the people of the several states," is voting to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state....it supposedly can have a Democratic member of the House and, down the descending road, two Democratic senators. Congress rationalizes this anti-constitutional willfulness by citing the Constitution's language that each house shall be the judge of the "qualifications" of its members and Congress can "exercise exclusive legislation" over the District.What, then, prevents Congress from giving House and Senate seats to Yellowstone National Park, over which Congress exercises exclusive legislation? Only Congress' capacity for embarrassment. So, not much. The Federal Reserve,... has been insulated from politics in performing its fundamental function of preserving the currency as a store of value — preventing inflation....undertaking hitherto uncontemplated functions, it has become an appendage of the executive branch. The coming costs, in political manipulation of the money supply, of this forfeiture of independence could be steep. Jefferson warned that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities." But Democrats, who trace their party's pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using "reconciliation" — a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to truncate debate and limit the minority's right to resist — to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17% of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president's budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable — so rely on ours.This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it." ***
Next we will have a charade of Supreme Court nominations of people ( not even necessarily judges to start with ) who satisfy the Obamanic requirements of empathy, blanket endorsement of abortion up to infanticide, and use of international law and customs to supersede the Constitution (which the President pledged to preserve, uphold and defend--now we recall that there was some parsing of the actual oath at the time of the inauguration Hmmm.)***