Anger, Technology Shake Up Political Landscape
The newfound volatility is due to tectonic, technology-driven power migration away from the traditional big organizing institutions.
by Chuck Raasch
USA Today
April 22, 2010
WASHINGTON — If you're angry or frustrated at the government, you're not alone.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press just reported that 21% of respondents to a March poll said they were mad at their own government. And 56% said they were frustrated.
Pew called it the highest anger-and-disgust level in a half-century of polling. It is due at least partially to the cumulative effect of political and institutional failure writ large. The last 38 years of that half-century have spanned Watergate, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Iran-Contra, Clinton-Lewinsky, the 2000 election legal fight, 9/11, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and government bailouts of the car, housing and banking industries.
"The litany ... just gives people a dim baseline view of government — that they are all a bunch of rascals, and none speaks for me," s…