To some extent. I'm not sure yet. I think we're all evil as a result of sin but God still allows us to experience some blessings, because he is good. We still have trees and sex and people who want to make good movies. But then we've got all those that want to charge us too much for those good movies, or people that want to cut down the trees, or throw sex into everything (thats an entirely different game of ball but maybe we should start a thread about it[seriously they've been saying we're sexually starved for the last 20 years and the hunger shows no signs of abating. Lets say there is a society obsessed with food...a whole theater fills up with people to look at a plate of food with a cloth over it, and they sit there two hours in perfect silence, until at the very end the cover of the food is taken off and everyone's eyes gleam with excitement. Then on their way home they buy some magazines with pictures of food, and when they get home, they stuff themselves with food while watching the Food Channel....you would think something was very wrong with that society. Namely that they were starving. But say they had free food at every stop light, you could stick your hand out and get a burger, and look at the advertisements for food while you waited for your turn to go. Obviously we would say that society had some seriously misplaced priorities. People excercise restraint in eating so they have a beautiful body to make sex better...but nobody excercises restraint in their sex desires (you can still lack restraint without sleeping around all the time or being involved in pornography...simply by entertaining yourself with any shampoo commercial on TV) to make their relationship with their wife better and their family tighter. If restraint is what is hurting us then why hasn't all this sexual freedom (socially acceptable, availability of contraceptives and morning after pills,, abortion, etc) helped us? If our sex appetite were just like our food appetite, then you could allow it free reign and it would be satiated without massive harm to societal order and values. A person would get full and go on living. But if one of us had absolute power to give their sexual appetite all it wanted, to fulfill its every fantasy and indulged its every desire, can you imagine the trouble that would cause for others?])
I think there is too much to consider. It has been argued that the intelligent are the easiest to fool--you can get the riled up about nothing. After all they are the ones running around reading all the scholarly journals. But the average joe who just wants to watch his football games and drink some beer with his mates, he doesn't care about all these political things. And so the only evil available for those who control average joe is a passive one. Get in the way of his football games and beer and you've got a big problem on your hands. But the evil possible with an intelligent man in your hands (to whom beer and football mean nothing)......those are the ones easiest to use for your workings of evil. So if we all become stupid, nothing inherntly evil will happen.....we'll just lose our rights. But if we have smart people (and we always will) then we're doomed. Well, thats only one theory. We might have enough good in us to right the wrongs...albiet with lots of bloodshed most likely.
But we should not confuse "do I have faith in humanity" with "do I have faith in america". I don't doubt the former, the latter I am almost certain is a negative.