Ever more citizens distrust a president who rallies support by deploying insult and accusation instead of inspiration, blaming a bewildering variety of personal and institutional enemies for the country's ills and his own pathology.
These worldviews, which include identity narratives of righteousness, become ever more rigid under these circumstances, leading to growing distrust, hatred and negative prejudice against out-groups.
The parade of senior Goldman executives who testified before Congress after the case arose seemed to put a public face on what had been a broader sense of distrust of Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis, focusing ever more attention on a firm whose patriarchs have always been adamant about having high standards.
"The lives of Mourinho and Benítez have crossed in a world that is ever more scrutinised and exposed by the media, which is why they look at each other with such distrust," he wrote, "but they have two things in common: a previously denied, hitherto unsatisfied hunger for glory, and a desire to have everything under control.
Whistler is ever more interesting.
Was Britten ever more inspired?
Ever more rules and taxes.
At a struggling company, these problems can reinforce each other: distrust and lack of focus lead people to disengage, which leads to more distrust, and so on.
What's more, distrust of Americans is a lesson many Iraqis learned the hard way.
Cohabitation is, indeed, ever more common.
