Look at the fact that tbere is no real danger of a nuclear exchange between superpowers. But they've been with us all along. I sense there is a pessimism. And it's too bad. Some of it is our public life, where nothing's off-bounds, even a woman's bedroom.
Every rumor is printed.
Too much sensationalism. I think the Vietnam era was kind of the genesis of it-the fact that many people turned on the government and on the Vietnam policy as immoral, aod turned on public officials as liars. We Americans condoned things we should have condemned in those days. We condoned running away, calling policemen 'pigs,' condoned a lot of things in the name of anti-Vietnam sentiment. Then Watergate put a cloud over all public officials, fairly or unfairly, and that kind of solidified this doubt and cynicism, the determination to prove that all public servants are bad.