[fl0ps]

The US is a low trust society because we're told not to trust people through highly negative news stories. The result is the US being primed to think there are child murderers and rapists under every bush, etc, etc. Ancedent to this unintentional effect was the incentivised "if it bleeds it reads" motivation for promotion of the highly negative.

[myself248]

Both of these things can be true at the same time. The news can overemphasize the worst, AND we can have an epidemic of drug problems, mental illness, and the crimes that those bring.

[Falkon1313]

Yet oddly, when I was a kid, and the crime rate was roughly double what it is now, we didn't have this problem.

There were drugs, oh you betchya, cocaine and crack and all these other cool things the D.A.R.E. officers were telling us about. There was crime, about twice as much of it as today. But us kids were out there riding our bikes around and playing till the streetlights came on.

This is something different entirely.