The wide scope of mistrust in institutions, and the discrediting of self-corrective measures
(Note: if you are pressed for time, I recommend, rather than toiling through my excursions, skipping down to the video near the bottom entitled “The Internet is a Machine that Devours Trust.” There, blogger Hank Green takes you down a trail from the Reformation to today, illustrating the impact of new technologies on social evolution. It’s 33 minutes long, but Green is so clear and articulate you can speed it up 50% or more without missing the main points. Speeding it up makes Green appear even more animated, which is fun. I have some interesting things to say, but I can’t hold a candle to Hank Green for infotainment.)
In a critique of the 2024 election, veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz observed “right now, fewer Americans trust the institutions that govern them than ever before . . . fewer Americans trust the people who run those institutions.” (See video at very end of this post for the interview with Luntz on 60 Minutes Australia.) You may not like Luntz’s politics (he’s a traditional fiscal conservative), but he’s an experienced, astute, and objective reader of the political scene who keeps his ear to the ground in polls and focus groups. His comments on trust in the video begin at 17:30. You also might find his portrayal of the 2024 presidential race—beginning at 2:20—insightful, if uncomfortable for fans of Kamala Harris (of which I am one).
(Note the videotaped interview with Luntz took place before it was found that Trump got less than 50% of the vote; the Australian interviewer mistakenly characterized the result as “very definitive.” Which it was not, as was obvious to anyone familiar with American politics and that blot on democracy known as the Electoral College, even before the revelation he got less than half the vote.)
We tend to think of the political Right Wing as the group most intensely mistrustful of government, but the results of a Pew Research poll in 2024 (below) showed a steep decline of trust overall in government between 1960 (73%) and 1980 (27%) among both parties, and over the last forty years has undulated up and down in a generally downhill trend to land at 37% among Democrats and 8%(!) among Republicans in 2023, for an overall percentage of 19% (see the second chart in the Pew report which separates the parties. Republican sentiment appears to be more strongly responsive to which party holds the White House). There was a small rise among all respondents between 2023 and 2024 (19% to 22%).
Sorry for blurry image; see the Pew Research poll for a sharper image and interactive pointing for exact percentages.
Continue reading “The Internet and the Collapse of Trust in Institutions”