Byline: WILLIAM R. MACKLIN Knight-Ridder
PHILADELPHIA You've probably never met Sharon Rementer, but if you do, understand one thing: She doesn't trust you.
It's nothing personal.
Rementer is 27, a protective homemaker with a husband she adores, a 3-year-old daughter she idolizes, and fears of violent crime and institutional and personal betrayal that keep her wary and on guard.
If Bill Clinton could feel her pain, he'd know that the current presidential scandal with its suggestions of fresh marital infidelity and repellent allegations of how Linda Tripp tape-recorded phone conversations with her supposed friend, White House intern Monica Lewinsky, has radiated right into Rementer's West Mayfair home, deepening her distrust.
``It's like you can't even trust your own friends,'' Rementer said. ``I guess it's true that you just can't trust anybody.''
Everyone, it seems, is suspect from the politicians who court your votes to the co-workers who buy you lunch. From the stranger who checks you out as you walk toward your car at the mall to the spouse who shares your bed.
Every headline about a priest assaulting a child, every pink slip issued by a profitable corporation, every fratricide, patricide, matricide or domestic beat-down, every highway dispute settled with gunfire, every tale of a renegade cop or a racially motivated imbroglio, carries an indelible message: You have no right to trust.
``I don't think there's any question that trust has gone down,'' said Walter Williams, an economist, public policy …
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