FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Americans don’t trust anymore, and that’s a big problem.

For more than 100 years trains have battled the steep grade from Washington, D.C., to all points west in the country as they cross the summit of the Allegheny Mountain range at this small hamlet just east of Meyersdale.

Last week as the Capitol Express was once again making its way from Chicago to its final destination in Washington D.C., a homemade sign, barely visible in the freshly fallen snow, reading “In God We Trust” caught the glare of the lights of the train.

It also caught the eye of a lone woman peering out the window of the glass domed sightseer car.

“Trust, something lost and rarely found in this country,” she said out loud to no one in particular as she braced herself in the observation car as it chugged the precipitous hills and curves.

The woman’s chance glimpse of a sign unknowingly answered the increasing problem facing our culture and society: Whom do we trust? The answer, it appears, is no one.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We trust our military, and in fact that trust has grown, said Richard Edelman, CEO of one of the world’s largest public relations consultancies. “Outside of that we are in such a crisis with trust that our faith and connection with the integral parts of our society is in collapse,” he said.

This is relevant to my paper on military coups.