The collapse of trust in institutions is fairly obvious by now. We’ve been harping on how institutions have been gutted from the inside out by repressive progressive politics, what now is called wokeness, but the problem pre-dates that now-fashionable term. There is a generational effort to tear the country apart, and so much of it started in education and expanded outward, what I’ve called the “campus to culture” phenomenon.
In 2017 I wrote, Legal Insurrection is 9 years old, and filled with dread:
Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry. This is, in many ways, more dangerous than government suppression of free speech because at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter. The education system, from public grade school through public and private higher ed, is gone. The frontal assault on free speech on campuses is the result. If you think this is just a Humanities and Social Sciences problem, stay tuned. In 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields. It’s happening now, it’s just not in the headlines yet.There is a rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable….Even language as a means of communication is corrupted, with terminology manipulated and coerced to achieve political ends….So I’m thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.
Apparently a lot of people have come around to my observation on the collapse of institutions. On July 5, 2022, Gallup released a survey finding Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low
Gallup summarizes Americans’ overall confidence in institutions by taking an average of the ratings of the 14 institutions it measures consistently each year — all but small business and large technology companies. This year’s 27% average of U.S. adults expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in those 14 institutions is three points below the prior low from 2014….Americans’ confidence in institutions has been lacking for most of the past 15 years, but their trust in key institutions has hit a new low this year. Most of the institutions Gallup tracks are at historic lows, and average confidence across all institutions is now four points lower than the prior low.Notably, confidence in the major institutions of the federal government is at a low point, at a time when the president and Congress are struggling to address high inflation, record gas prices, increased crime and gun violence, continued illegal immigration, and significant foreign policy challenges from Russia and China. Confidence in the Supreme Court had already dropped even before it overturned Roe v. Wade, though that ruling was expected after a draft opinion was leaked in May.The confidence crisis extends beyond political institutions at a time when a near record-low 13% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. Confidence in institutions is unlikely to improve until the economy gets better — but it is unclear if confidence will ever get back to the levels Gallup measured in decades past, even with an improved economy.
Some of the specifics are not surprising – the news media is in the toilet.
The drop in just the past year has been precipitous particularly for the Supreme Court — the result of a years-long effort by Democrats to destroy that institution after a conservative majority was achieved. The Congress is at the very bottom, and the presidency had a precipitous drop.
The Gallup historical data demonstrates longer term trends by institutional type. The Military has dropped 10 points since the Trump years:
This is all interesting data, and confirms what we see. Back to the problem I posed in 2017:
So I’m thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.
It has a real potential to get very ugly.
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