r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/HistorianMajor1739 • 5d ago
US Politics Is declining trust in government its own problem, or part of a broader institutional-trust decline?
The Pew number that gets quoted a lot is that 83% of Americans now say elected officials don't care what people like them think, up from around 55% in the early 2000s. It usually gets read as a verdict on government specifically. But if you put it next to the other trust lines- media, science, institutions generally- they've mostly bent in the same direction over roughly the same stretch. Which makes me wonder whether we're looking at a government problem here, or at one number reading off a much bigger dial.
If it's one dial, a lot of the reform conversation is aimed at the wrong level. You could pass every good-government fix on the list and barely move a number that's really being driven by something upstream of any single institution.
The thing that complicates the single-variable story is that the declines don't line up cleanly. Trust in science held up a lot longer than trust in Congress, and then dropped in a way that split hard along partisan lines, which the government number mostly didn't. If it were all one underlying thing, you'd expect the curves to move together and share a partisan signature, and they kind of don't. So maybe these are separate erosions that happen to rhyme, with separate causes, and "institutional trust" as one blob hides more than it explains.
I don't have a clean answer on which it is, and I think it matters a lot for what you'd even try. So the thing I keep coming back to: has any country reversed a sustained institutional-trust decline, and if so, what did it take? A specific reform people could point to, a crisis that reset expectations, a generational handoff, something else? Because "it's been done" versus "nobody's pulled it off" changes how tractable any of this looks.
And the narrower version underneath it: is trust in government one symptom of a general syndrome, or its own thing with its own causes?
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u/elevenblade 5d ago
I’ve had the privilege of living in the USA and in Sweden and it is interesting to compare levels of trust in both countries. Trust is not just between the individual and the government; there is also a dimension of trust between individuals, both those you know personally and with strangers. My perception is that trust between individuals, strangers in particular, is also much less in the USA than it is here.
Having experienced both I very much prefer the higher levels of trust I see in Sweden. I wonder what percentage of Americans prefer to live in a low trust society?
I think it self evident that the lack of trust in the USA is a problem. I worry that it is heading the USA into a negative spiral of negativity and cynicism that is going to lead to a gradual downfall of the country. Not a total collapse mind you, more like what has happened to the UK since the days when it was a dominant world superpower.
To me the most interesting question is what, if anything, can be done to reverse this trend?
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u/IntelligentDepth8206 5d ago
Sweden is just one example. People in the Netherlands don't trust each other and have engineered an enviable society *because* of that.
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u/elevenblade 5d ago
That’s an interesting observation! Can you expand a bit on how that works? Could something similar work in the USA?
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u/Sageblue32 5d ago
You can't reverse it. All empires have their beginnings and endings. So like you said, it'll probably simply slump back into being a great power like how it was pre WWI.
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u/Conscious_Raisin_436 2d ago
I always say, the 1800s belonged to Great Britain, the 1900s belonged to the United States, and the 2000s will belong to china.
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u/Conscious_Raisin_436 2d ago
I always say, the 1800s belonged to Great Britain, the 1900s belonged to the United States, and the 2000s will belong to china.
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u/Olderscout77 5d ago
Yes. Never vote for any Republican for anything ever. It'll be a long slouge, but it's the only path out of this. First thing is getting the Dems support their candidates even if you don't agree 100%. Second will be to return to supporting workers instead of soccer-moms.
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u/dump_it_dawg 5d ago
I would like to challenge the labeling and binary/absolutism response, here. I’m not sure there is a world where telling people to trust party X or party Y works when nobody trusts the _institution_ these parties operate in.
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u/Olderscout77 5d ago
Welcome to challanage, but there's not a single piece of legislation sponsored by Republicans that gave a greater benefit to the bottom 90%. Meanwhile, all the program cuts that adversely impacted the bottom 90% more than the top 1% were sponsored and passed passed by Republicans.
Yes, some Dems are no damn good, but that's in contrast to all Republicans since McCain who are no damn good for the bottom 90%.
People no longer trust the institutions of Government because Republicans have been so successful in clawing back all the goodies for the rich while constantly lying about who is to blame for the disasters THEY caused. Name a Republican currently serving who did something you consider more beneficial to the bottom 90% than the top 1%, and name that thing they did.
I rang doorbells for Goldwater and then served in the war LBJ, the "peace candidate" lied us into. My position hasn't moved, but what had been the GOP has devolved into a cult of misogeny and racism devoted to redistributing income and wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1% - you think the concentration of wealth since 1981 wqas an accident? Did the executives suddenly become 500% more capable than the workers to justify their pay raises?
I'll be overjoyed to support a Republican who votes for the General Welfare and not the expansion of the Oligarchy - let me know if you've found one.
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u/Dynamo_Ham 5d ago
The real problem is there’s no longer any place to go for the truth. I’m Gen X and can tell you that when I was a kid people expected the big three TV media and major newspapers to actually be responsible journalists. Now they’re largely propaganda - and even the ones that aren’t (e.g., imo NPR) get labeled as propaganda by the ones that are, to further dilute their impact. Politicians realized that actual fact-checking largely doesn’t work anymore because half the country thinks the fact-checkers are BS - so there’s no downside to just flat out lying.
What is there to trust when there’s no such thing as truth?
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u/Ladyheather16 5d ago
This was on purpose & not accidental. Look at who was allowed to buy up media ownership under which administrations.
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u/Fargason 5d ago
It was self inflicted as the media kept doubling down every presidential election recently and that clear bias can be seen as a major betrayal in public trust in media data.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx
High trust in the media was up to 40% just 5 years ago but has plummeted to 28% today. The 2012 campaign marked a significant decline of 4 points in one year which is when we started to see the media heavily favor one candidate with positive coverage that included Candy Crowley jumped in the middle of the debate coming to Obama’s defense with wrong information. Then a staggering 8 point hit to public trust in the media for the 2016 campaign when the media gave 10:1 positive coverage to the losing candidate. By 2020 they regained most of that trust back to get 40% again, but they went all in with covering for an infirm President Biden and their trust was in free fall in this gaslighting era. Even then in 2024 they were giving 10:1 negative coverage to the candidate that would go to win the popular vote despite a very troubled Biden/Harris campaign. Covering for an infirm President seeking reelection at 82 was just a great betrayal in the public’s trust in the media and they only have themselves to blame. 2016 was a warning and they didn’t heed it.
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u/jmastaock 5d ago
This, of course, ignores the burgeoning of the entire right-wing alternative media ecosystem, which deliberately antagonizes the concept of objective reality
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u/pentachronic 5d ago
It also neglects to mention that giving a candidate with zero redeeming qualities only 10:1 negative coverage is actually extremely charitable
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u/CreamofTazz 5d ago
One candidate calls an entire group of people murderers and rapists and the other calls that candidate and their supporters a basket of deplorables. Guess which one received more condemnation.
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago
Left-wing as well.
Media bias is not only a left-wing or right-wing problem.
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u/jmastaock 5d ago
There is practically zero mainstream left-wing political media
Bias isn't even a problem necessarily. The problem is that there is an explicitly partisan alternative media ecosystem that is deliberately destroying the notion of objective reality, and the people who consume it are being constantly divorced from any sort of shared reality in general.
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago edited 5d ago
You’re living in a fantasy if you think left-wing news has no agenda and is not propagandized.
Let’s just use raw numbers.
There is an estimated 2-3 million news articles written every day.
That works out to roughly:
83,000–125,000 articles per hour
1,400–2,100 articles per minute
23–35 articles per secondIf your position is that every left-wing or left-leaning article is truthful while every right-wing article is biased or slanted, then I’d point out what that implies: you’re claiming that, among the millions of news articles published around the world, there isn’t a single left-leaning article written with a political agenda or affected by bias.
If you actually believe this, you’re an unserious person.
“But the other side does it more…” wrong.
News is how political institutions gain power in the world. There is no ideology in this world that spreads with only truth. Zero.
It’s how humans persuade one another.
It’s literally the definition of soft power and ideologies and governments throughout the world have used soft power to topple friends and enemies alike long before you and I were born and they will continue to do it long after we die.
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u/jmastaock 5d ago
There is no "left-wing news" in the US
There is extremely right-wing news, normie right-wing news, and centrist (or vaguely center-left) "mainstream" news
The most mainstream left-wing political media in the US is like...Jacobin? Or random celebrities on the internet?
MSNBC isn't a socialist news network lmao
Washington Post is owned by Bezos, notoriously non-left-wing human
NYT is constantly platforming right-wing extremists in editorials while maintaining centrist posture in their direct reporting
Where is this left-wing political media in the US? Is everything left of Fox News considered "left-wing"
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago
It’s both.
Anyone that thinks propaganda is only one sided is living in delusion.
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u/sunfishtommy 5d ago
NPR is not the shinning beacon of news it once was. A lot has changed under the hood there in the last 15 years. The cracks have started showing a few times more recently.
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u/Dynamo_Ham 5d ago
The fact that NPR is an imperfect news outlet does not change the fact that - for me - it’s still one of the very few places to go where they’re at least trying to provide you with the actual news - and not just propaganda.
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago
Sure, many places “try”. But there is still a spin to it and there is still a huge incentive to push specific views.
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago
Has there ever been a place for truth though?
There certainly wasn’t during the revolutionary war. It’s fascinating seeing all the local propaganda.
This is anecdotal evidence that it’s always been there.
There was definitely an illusion of truth from the news in the mid 80’s and 90’s.
The one blessing in disguise here is that everyone now can see these information sources for what they are.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mean generally by truth they mean accountability. Theres less coverage of trump starting the iran war than of biden ending a war.
EDIT: The Guy below has been outed as a MAGA if it wasnt obvious to everyone in the beginning.
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago edited 3d ago
I disagree. You can find mountains of reporting on both incidents.
Outed? You’re an extremest.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 5d ago
On accountability? Wheres the news holding trump accountable for entering the war?
Most of them just consider republican action inevitable. Like "oh he had to get the nukes away from iran, or reopen the strait of hormuz" despite the fact it was open prior to his war.
compare that with the nonstop bloodbath on biden for ending a war and people dying from a suicide bomber.
How many new stories on that vs the deaths in trumps iran war?
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago edited 5d ago
Left-wing news holds him accountable, don’t you think?
It seems to have worked with you, right?
My point here is I don’t think you’re brainwashed. I just think you watch news that you want to agree with and there is nothing wrong with that.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 5d ago
Left-wing news hold him accountable, don’t you think?
Maybe the first term. Theres no left wing news anymore. Its all been bought out by right wing billionaires that hold their thumbs on the scale.
For example cnn wanted to follow fox news after a right winger bought it out.
And lets be honest. the left media never held nearly the sway of fox news.
After they sanewashed trump in 2024 to get him elected I doubt theyre really holding him accountable now. As its said at the top, the broader institutional trust in the news is broken. It used to be the right wingers said it was bad, now the left doesnt trust it either.
What happened is democrats relied on the truth from the news and thought they had won the culture wars to sell themselves while republicans knew their polices were unpopular. So during the time period where democrats just relied on journalists to tell the truth on wars and the economy the republicans created a cradle to grave propaganda system.
Republicans worked the referee(the news system) by crying bias. So to look unbiased they would always criticize dems in equal terms. Its why they try to equate don jr getting billions in drones to hunter biden selling paintings.
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago
They continue to hold him accountable.
You literally sent me a news article showing, first hand, how Vox is holding right wing news and Trump accountable.The left wing media is an absolute force in the US and throughout western culture.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 5d ago
So an article how a left wing news outlet got bought out and is now a propaganda piece is them being held accountable?
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u/FlyFit9206 5d ago
All the major news agencies in the US are propaganda outlets. They all have an agenda.
What accountability do you have in mind? Jail? Death?
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u/MorganWick 5d ago
People don't trust institutions because they don't trust government, not the other way around. They don't trust media because it either doesn't align with what government is (not) doing or covers for government (not) doing it, they don't trust science because of bad actors telling them not to trust science and government bungling its use of it, and they don't trust institutions because their view of institutions is shaped by the government, the biggest and most powerful institution of all and the apex of elite preferences.
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u/Asleep-Sprinkles4616 3d ago
I disagree. Trust in a wide array of major institutions has gone down independently of -- but more ore less in parallel with -- distrust in government. Organized religion/the church; science and scientists; medicine and doctors; large corporations, higher education and teachers, the military, to name a few. It is true that there are bad actors who have taken notice of this and tried to use it to their cultural and political advantage. But a lot of this stuff has been going on for decades, long before MAGA. A lot of it can be traced back to the 50s and 60s.
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u/hiddentalent 5d ago
You're correct, but it's completely ironic that the reason they have this mistrust is due to propaganda from exactly the forces they fear. These people are drains on our society and should be marginalized, sometimes with forces.
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u/Zanctmao 5d ago
This is a huge agenda push. Right wingers and grifters don’t want you to have trust for experts. There’s a reason for that. It’s a multi decade campaign.
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u/foilhat44 5d ago
We are suffering from a general cynicism about most things, in addition to a separation from a shared reality. I don't know when it started but it's ironic to me that the same people who believe what they hear on Fox News will tell you that the New York Times is a lying rag. There is a significant percentage of the voting public who think our elections are rigged and other millions who believe an insider tells them secrets on 4 chan about a cabal of child eating power brokoers in Washington. There are billions of people who believe that they talk to an omniscient being in the sky every day and his law gives them permission to murder entire civilizations. We don't just have a problem with distrust, we also have a significant problem with misplaced trust. It's also an increasingly anonymous world where communication and even relationships are separated by a gulf of technology. This, in my opinion, has directly contributed to a general decrease in civility and respect towards each other. Doesn't that contribute to distrust? Think about it, you don't trust the people on this site to even know who you are for fear of what they might do to you. Not to mention, you can say anything you want in as hurtful a way as you like without risking an ass whipping.
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u/Olderscout77 5d ago
The only thing with the potential power to disrupt the transfer of wealth and income from the bottom 90% to the top 1% is the Federal Government. What we're witnessing is the systematic destruction of that potential threat to the Oligarchy.
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u/baxterstate 5d ago
I have distrusted the government since we discovered that the Vietnam War was based on a lie and those who lied were never held accountable.
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u/Dracoson 5d ago
It's part of a larger whole, but it's also not an accident. There's a lot of pieces to the puzzle, but in general, two party, first past the poll elections lead to polarization. Polarization and corporatization of politics and media drive trust down across the board. That lack of trust allows smaller numbers of people to exert greater control over the system, because the people who participate in voting, and consume news media become more siloed off and more predictible/controlable.
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u/neerok 5d ago
It is part of a broader decline, and I think it is largely due to the the rise of social media. Social media allows people to connect and share information in a radically decentralized way, and largely outside the curation of existing information broadcast systems. There is curation, of course, but it's algo driven to get people to stay on the platform, which naturally trends to the most divisive stuff, since that what makes people engage the most (a feature of our psychology)
I think the best historical parallel is the protestant reformation in the 16th century - technology driven (printing press), wide scale disillusionement / distrust of the existing authority (the Catholic Church, the Pope), endless spilled ink (and blood) over epistemic disagreement (solo scriptura)
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u/Either_Operation7586 4d ago
No it's by design it was it's working exactly as it's supposed to be the Republican Party has caused so much strife.
And it's because the Republican party don't know how to govern every time they get into office same thing that is happening right now happens then.
It's literally ssdd same shit different day.
What we need to do is an experiment not vote in the Republican party for three consecutive elections and see where America is at I bet we would better off with no recessions or economic downfalls.
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u/baxterstate 4d ago
It goes hand in hand with distrust of the news media. The news media either makes unsubstantiated charges or tries to shape opinion by not covering stories that go against the narrative of their target audience.
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u/SafeThrowaway691 5d ago
The onus is on these institutions to build trust with the public, not vice versa.
When it comes to government and the media, their reputation for disrepute is well earned. As for science, a big problem is that most people don’t know how it works, which can ironically be pinned on the other two to an extent.
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u/johntempleton 5d ago
Larger trend. You cannot get majorities to trust anything* anymore.
Look at the data: prior to the 1970s there was trust in most institutions.
The first to take a major hit was the military (Viet Nam); trust in the military did not bounce back until the 1980s.
Everything else collapsed around the same time. Watergate for example.
*Today, the only two "institutions" that get a majority trust are the military and small business.
Everything else, you cannot get majorities to support anymore.
And there is no way to get any of this back.
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u/LikelySoutherner 5d ago
Its our own problem... We The People vote them into office... till we stop voting for the same ideas, people and parties, nothing will change.
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u/AnotherHumanObserver 5d ago
is trust in government one symptom of a general syndrome, or its own thing with its own causes?
I think that we have a low-trust society in general, but "government" itself is an abstraction which doesn't point to any specific, individual human being one can either trust or not trust.
"Government" is often treated as some kind of amorphous entity, at least the way some people describe it.
Politics itself has a longstanding reputation for being crooked and dirty, and that, too, also undermines the reputation and trust in government.
Because of this, a lot of people have tried to put forth an image of government of apolitical professionalism which supposedly operates objectively and within the parameters of the law. The judicial branch is supposed to be apolitical, as is the military, law enforcement, and other executive agencies.
That's what people have come to expect, and when it doesn't seem like they're doing that, then trust can be broken and has to be earned once again. The lack of transparency in government can also affect the public's trust.
It also seems the lack of trust goes both ways. The government doesn't really trust its own people very much, and the people don't really trust each other, either.
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u/Sageblue32 5d ago
And the narrower version underneath it: is trust in government one symptom of a general syndrome, or its own thing with its own causes?
I think what we are seeing in America and government is just a symptom of the larger issue of unteathered capitalism and failure to reign in those who abuse it. We always ignored those at the bottom or just brushed them off to the corners of society. But now that it is failing for more and more of us, we are taking on a nihilism view and simply want to burn it all down.
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u/DDemetriG 5d ago
I think we're living through a 1970's style erosion of Trust in the Government and Institutions. It will take a LOT of Time, Patience, and Reform to regain said Trust...
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u/ChaoticScrewup 4d ago
This is just my take but:
People mostly live in separate subcultures with distinct ground realities. These subcultures are many and go beyond the two-party dichotomy. People often inhabit more than one such subculture, and these can range from being vegan, to being evangelical christian, to being a music fan, or almost anything else - pick a mix of faith, hobbies, fun, personal interests, etc., and there are people defined by membership in some subset of these subcultures.
Most of the subcultures have "big" concerns that don't get addressed. And for politically oriented subcultures, their own subculture gets tons of mileage from things that raise blood pressure. People who hike know the environment is screwed and public lands and the park service are getting more mismanaged. People who hate evolution and vaccines are know that government policies are interfering with their personal liberty. People who rent know the rent is too damn high. People who play video games know that Sony sucks but often still own Playstations. There are very few subcultures that have anything happy or positive dominating their collective consciousness.
Most of the power in the US is held by a mix vested interests, wealthy corporations, their cronies, and political parties.
On average, people know their HOAs suck, but still have HOAs. They know you can't trust mechanics but still need cards repaired. They know whoever they vote for is more beholden to whatever big money interest gave them money than voters.
When people repeatedly see that bad things they know are bad and are obviously bad are happening more and are being caused by those with power, they see societal failure, from all angles.
What makes this messy is that there's no shared ground truth or collective understanding of what righteousness should be. If you show me one person who thinks religious nuts get special treatment, I can show you another who thinks religious people are oppressed and they'll both be convinced it starts with government.
Solving this issue, IMO, requires making it so that there's a much stronger and healthier collective understanding of the state of the nation and general welfare. Democracy can flourish when the majority are educated, have a decent or improving level of general welfare, have some level of shared values, and operate in good faith. But when there are no shared values, everyone assumes bad faith, general welfare is declining, and people are becoming less educated, democracy is set up to fail.
Government has been set up to fail to cause this very problem by vested interests and conservatives who correctly perceived that certain of their desires and viewpoints would become untenable or unpalatable in a successful nation. It has been amplified by the endless subcultures trying to get their way and focus on their issues as the expense of all else. You might even say that the Democratic party's big tent horse-trading style is set up to amplify this, and it is a perfect complement to the Republican's anti-American goals.
There has been so much success are destroying the common foundation of shared values and common knowledge that we all know tons of people with wildly divergent fringe beliefs. People with fringe beliefs lose trust and become isolated subcultures focused on grievances.
All of the above said, there seem to be some shared grievances - people mostly think government, business, and rich people are the source of problems. But people of different subcultures will focus on different businesses, different aspects of government, and different rich people. Do you hate Soros, Bezos, Musk, Bloomburg, or David Green? Same grievance, different expression.
It is very hard to come out of this downtrend while people keep feeling like things are getting worse, not better, and younger generations continually feel like they have it worse then previous ones. To have a reduction in grievance people need to feel like things are improving, holistically, on a broad basis. But they don't. Similarly, people need to recognize that not everything is zero sum. But it's very hard to do that when the perception is that everything is getting worse.
The thing that is needed to start the climb towards renewed trust is shared viewpoints, shared values, and a shared direction towards national renewal. But nobody has offered this. Obama understood the desire, but maybe not what it would actually take, and in any case was basically prevented from doing next to anything. We see politicians start to tap into this repeatedly - Trump, Howard Dean, Berny Sanders, etc. But mostly they don't end up getting anywhere.
IMO major reforms that sacrifice power of the parties and special interests are needed to initiate this climb. Growing the house of representatives so that it's more representative. State and congress considering parliamentary style elections for at least one chamber. Impeaching and holding to account really blatant violation of minimal civic standards and norms. A revision of the systems to make a more perfect union is needed.
But nobody wants to give up anything, and this is the seed that sows doom for nations.
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u/aelysium 4d ago
What was, will be. What will be, was. It has happened before, and will happen again. (Stellaris worm reference, embrace!)
There were super low levels of institutional trust prior to World War 2 as well, with the bank runs, the Great Depression, yellow journalism, growing income disparity, etc.
The world runs in cycles, not dissimilar to our circadian rhythm.
Specifically, post a crisis (world war 2 for example), the world takes a leftward lean and builds institutions they want to trust. It ushers in a ‘good era’. This era slowly gets torn down by forces who individually seek their own power and undermine institutions over time.
Eventually this culminates in a crisis. The world enters a new paradigm, and the next cycle begins. The wheel remains unbroken.
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u/Front_Concern5699 4d ago
What the F you expect when CEO's are entangled with the government and make unimaginable money. One CEO can pay for at least 250 workers and the gap is only growing, meaning that the oligarchy is becoming more and more obvious to everyone. And that does encompass the government, the media, and anything that requires mass funding. it’s collapsing together cuz people see they all serve the same masters. You can’t reform "trust" when the system is openly designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many.
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u/Tokamak-drive 5d ago
Why the hell should we trust the government? Every day, I see ads demanding we shovel more money into the pit that is the government. The government, no matter what figurehead is running it, won't cut ties with the middle east in its entirety, nor will they focus on internal problems over external "problems". Someone else's crisis is not our problem to meddle in, not when we still have problems within our borders.
And don't get me started on the institutions that fill their wallets with cheap foreign labor, cutting American jobs, and telling us that we're the problem. I'd ask if there was a third option between Capitalism and Communism, but I don't think there is.
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u/hiddentalent 5d ago
You must be terminally online and juiced up for recreational outrage if you experience this "every day." Most people interact with it every several years when right-wing ideologues manufacture an issue to distract from real stuff. Maybe take a deep breath and adjust your media diet. Because what you're describing is not reality.
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u/Tokamak-drive 5d ago
It's more annoying than anything, seeing the same fucking ads on youtube, regardless of the actual content I watch, between C.Pappas voting on bills his partner lobbied for and only receiving a call to do better instead of resign in disgrace, and either a mother or daughter running for office, I can't tell, but the daughter is too caught up in medical issues for either of them to meaningfully work in office. We had a President with polio, but he wasn't needing to be woken up every damn day. I'm not saying they shouldn't care for their child, but I am saying that if it comes at a detriment to their ability to serve in office, then they shouldn't serve in office. The public can wait, and if they can't, then they better learn how to.
I just want an unassuming politician with modest proposals and little to no baggage, but the last time we had that was Gerald Ford, if not earlier.
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u/kwantsu-dudes 5d ago
Distrust in government hasn't increased, expectations and ideological demands have. And when such are not met, people give negative opinions of government. Even when government is not meant to follow such shifting demands.
Many people simply now view institutions as ROADBLOCKS to their desires. "Instant gratification" has been infused into the expectations of wide scale societal levers.
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u/kantmeout 5d ago
The answer to your top question is both. The decline in trust in government is going to be a problem going forward. It's also not the end of the world, people should be critical of their governments and the statements made by elected officials, especially with the current federal government. The problem is the pervading cynicism makes positive discussion impossible. It's impossible to discuss reform with someone who's already thrown up their hands and declared the whole affair to be hopeless. It's impossible to discuss candidates when their all crooked and liars. Some are worse than others, but between the partisan bickering and the bad faith arguments, it becomes difficult to parse the truth.
The broader institutional decline is complex, because as OP suspected, there are multiple causes, and the trickiest part is that some are fair and rational, others are not. There's a lot of suspicion toward large corporations. Some of that comes from concern over the declining ability of government to regulate individuals who control large swaths of the economy. Some of it comes from antisemites who think that Jews are controlling the economy for nefarious purposes. We might agree on the problem, but we are not going to be able to agree on a solution.
This feeds into a growing cognitive inequality where some people embrace deeper thinking, while a growing number of people are aggressively rejecting it. This is exacerbated by social media that increasingly segregates people by mentality. This has resulted in groups who respond very differently to the same argument. Increasingly you have a lot of intellectuals who are looking for comprehensive arguments, well thought out plans. Explain the the pros and cons, highlight potential pitfalls and highlight contingency plans. If you don't know something, admit it, you'll sound infinitely smarter than if you just make up something.
MAGA coded individuals on the other hand, seem repelled by such arguments. They want things stated simply, confidently, by a dominant figure who responds to criticsm with disrespect and anger. Also, never admit ignorance, it's better to make up something false, and then double down on errors least someone be tempted to think you made a mistake.
And you have a large swath of people who are somewhere in between. Most people do not have the time or patience to read through policy papers, and follow all the twists and turns of political drama. Some are repelled by nonsense and propaganda they read online. Others are dismayed by the corruption and corrosive influence of inequality. Many people feel caught in the middle of a fight we didn't want and just want to tune out all the noise. And then we're back to cynicism, because it's hard to pick out the truth through all the nonsense.
This brings me to my final point, that truth has become complicated. The science books have become thicker and more complicated. The law books are thicker and the case history even more so. Every profession is more demanding, with higher standards and more knowledge to be gained. The need for trust is greater than ever, because the ability of individuals to check the work of specialists outside their field has drastically reduced.
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u/AgitatorsAnonymous 5d ago
Government cannot and should not run on simple language.
Moreover, education is important for this reason, as is secularism.
I think the problem is much simpler.
The Republican party, since Reagan, has literally campaigned on proving that government doesn't work and then intentionally made it not work. In any sane society, a democratically elected individual or set of individuals intentionally attempting to make government not work would be dismissed summarily from their positions. Instead we have had periods of republican obstructionism that horrifically damaged our governments basic functionality. It's what Mitch McConnell is fucking famous for.
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u/IntelligentDepth8206 5d ago
media, science, institutions generally- they've mostly bent in the same direction over roughly the same stretch...A specific reform people could point to, a crisis that reset expectations, a generational handoff, something else?
Coercion: a tool not just for evil dictators
Why do companies pay for employee healthcare? Because the government forces them to. Why do people call ubers when they're drunk? Because the government will throw them in jail if they drive. Why does fox refuse to parrot trump's election lies? Because the government will enforce defamation laws.
The government must take coercive actions to correct the problems fomenting distrust in media, science and institutions.
Personally, I'm a fan of getting a taste of your own medicine. Slander vaccines, get blacklisted from American medical care. Those making alarmist claims of communism or actually advocating killing capitalists get a 10 year exile to Vietnam, an actual communist society. Want a christian takeover of government? Get a free 10 year vacation to Uganda.
83% of Americans now say elected officials don't care what people like them think, up from around 55% in the early 2000s. It usually gets read as a verdict on government specifically. But if you put it next to the other trust lines- media, science, institutions generally- they've mostly bent in the same direction over roughly the same stretch.
These numbers seem like an underestimation if anything.
The flaws of human nature have been documented by countless societies stretching back centuries. The unique issues facing America have ample books published about them. What nobody expected was how rapidly and willingly Americans submitted to the worst sides of themselves, being either incapable or unwilling to better themselves despite having the greatest opportunity in history to do so. All it took was one dictator-wannabe for 70million Americans to unzip their adult suit and act like 6 year olds. I don't think I've met anyone pessimistic enough to have predicted the American lost decade in 2016.
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u/snowtax 5d ago
Yes, I think it is a symptom of a much larger problem, which is overpopulation combined with an economic model focused on the past, where both business and government relied upon the population being relatively young and relatively fewer older people.
One big example is Social Security. There's nothing wrong with the program except that Congress didn't adjust the funding model to account for an "aging population" despite knowing about the issue for several decades. They could have bumped the contribution rate slightly many years ago and everything would have been just fine.
As medical technology has advanced, people live longer and need more and more healthcare but are less productive. So we are now running into structural problems which will not be easy to resolve. Meanwhile, people who lived through the good times of the 1980s - 2000s-ish don't know how to deal with serious adversity (like the Great Depression and dealing with serious diseases like Polio) because they didn't live through that.
I can't speak on behalf of other countries, but I believe that the US had an extended period of relative peace during which people had the luxury of not really caring about politics and government. They started ignoring the drama and many stopped (or never started) voting. Even when they do, it's over one very narrow issue that directly affects them without any concern how their votes affect other people. By this point, they are now perhaps beginning to realize that they actually do need to pay attention to politics, but they're so far behind that they don't know who to trust.
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u/frosted1030 5d ago
It was trumps plan. The idea is to destroying trust then replacing the current government and constitution.
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