Loss of trust in government is an inevitable consequence of government growing huge and constantly insisting that all of its policy preferences are "emergencies" that require compulsory "unity."
Few Americans alive today can remember a time when their political class wasn't constantly screaming at them about "emergencies" and "crises" that supposedly justified discarding the restraints on government, and even dispensing with democracy. The Fierce Urgency of Now!
We lived in a perpetual state of emergency, a constant state of "war" against various social issues. The better things were, the louder our political and media class railed against our complacency and screamed at us to get up and DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW.
Military planners know that armed forces cannot be kept on high alert all the time. It's exhausting and demoralizing, it blurs their ability to perceive and respond to real emergencies, and it erodes their trust in commanders.
This is true of civilian life as well. We've been "at war" and "in crisis" for GENERATIONS now. People are exhausted from it, and suspicious that every new cry of alarm is just another cynical ploy from the political class to grab more money and power.
That ties into another consequence of perpetual state growth: corruption. There are no big, honest governments, and there never will be. The bigger the State grows, the more corrupt it becomes. Public cynicism is an entirely rational response to endemic corruption.
The people also notice, despite the best efforts of State-aligned media, that the ruling class never considers itself bound by the same "emergency measures" it demands from everyone beneath it. A life of constant crisis is for the Little People.
This is an aspect of the endemic corruption of Big Government. Beyond a certain point, the State cannot grow more powerful if the political elite are bound by the same rules they impose on everyone else. There must always be exemptions for the elite and their allies.
All but the oldest living Americans spent their whole lives being told they were surrounded by perpetual crises. They have been constantly lectured that they don't care enough, they aren't sacrificing enough. They have never been given a day of peace and contentment.
They've also lived their whole lives watching the corrupt ruling class exempt itself from all of the sacrifices, and demonstrating how much it "cares" by spending other people's money. They know the Perpetual Crisis is a political scam.
They also know that despite all of these constant "emergency measures" and incredible sums of money confiscated and spent, none of the Perpetual Crises ever gets any BETTER. The political class never stops sounding its alarms. None of the "emergency" programs ever stop growing.
Against that backdrop, it's not surprising that the appearance of a REAL crisis, a real emergency, caused the corrupt ruling class to fly apart at the seams while producing apprehension and cynicism from the public. There were no reserves of trust left to tap.
We certain aren't refilling those reserves of trust in the wake of the pandemic. The ruling class is no longer interested in persuasion or earning anyone's trust. It's all about attacks, hectoring, insults, and compulsion now.
The ruling class is addressing its trust deficit by making us distrust EACH OTHER more. The only strategy they can imagine is teaching us to hate and fear each other so much that we stop thinking about how little we trust THEM. It will get worse.
We have a fair number of REAL crises heading our way, many of them caused by the corruption and incompetence of the ruling class, their constant crisis mongering, and the loss of faith in each other they have inflicted upon us. We won't hear the real alarms when they go off. /end
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