https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/6030279-us-societal-distrust-growth/
Researchers at the Marquette Law School Poll recently identified a sharp generational decline in trust across the United States. Americans born before 1960 still hold onto a baseline assumption that their neighbors will not rob them, given half a chance. They are the most trusting demographic in the country.
The numbers worsen with each successive generation. The cohort born in the 2000s registers the highest levels of distrust ever recorded by the project. A significant portion of young adults operate under the functional premise that everyone else is a threat.
A comprehensive 25-country survey published by Pew Research Center earlier this year found that Americans do not merely distrust one another. Increasingly, they see their fellow citizens as morally bankrupt. American citizens are far more likely to view their fellow countrymen as fundamentally evil than citizens of the other surveyed nations.
Viewing the opposing political or cultural faction as mistaken allows for regular political debate. Viewing them as beyond redemption eliminates the possibility of finding common ground. You do not negotiate with a monster.
how did such a state of affairs arise?
The primary reason this trajectory will likely worsen is that the incentives align perfectly with animosity. Media algorithms, political fundraising operations, and cultural gatekeepers generate billions of dollars in revenue by validating this exact contempt. A peaceful, trusting populace is economically useless to the current infrastructure. Modern America has built a business model out of demonizing the person next door. To keep the money flowing, people must stay angry enough to click, donate and hate.
The institutional elite discovered that rage scales infinitely better than unity. A divided populace creates highly predictable voting blocks and captive consumer markets. This calculated division ensures that the industry of outrage remains fully funded and sustained. Every political campaign relies on the explicit premise that the opposition intends to dismantle civilization — either forcing you into communism or fascism, neither of which, if we are being honest, sounds particularly appealing.
The current generation entering adulthood has never experienced a society in which cooperation was the default setting. They grew up watching the adults in the room treat the opposing political party as an existential threat to survival.
The country is locked into a cycle where distrust breeds contempt, contempt destroys relationships, and destroyed relationships ensure that the next generation doubles down on the disdain. The country is settling into a permanent, highly profitable state of mutual loathing. For much of its history, the United States has been united more in name than in reality. Now, it’s a nation divided not only by borders, but by an unbridgeable psychological gulf.
The concept of the ruling elite is most closely associated with Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), an Italian sociologist who argued that every society, regardless of its political structure, is always governed by a small minority. For Pareto, what defined this minority was not just wealth but a combination of superior psychological traits – intelligence, decisiveness, and strategic thinking – that allowed them to rise above the masses.
Of course the elites should make the decision due their superior intelligence!
Lions are elites who rely on force, tradition, and authority to hold power. They are conservative and prioritize stability. Foxes, on the other hand, govern through cunning, manipulation, and innovation – they adapt, negotiate, and outmaneuver their opponents. According to Pareto, societies thrive when lions and foxes balance each other, but stagnation sets in when one type dominates for too long, eventually triggering reform or revolution.
For Burnham, the real ruling class of the modern world was not the old capitalist owner but the manager – a category that included corporate executives, government bureaucrats, and technical specialists. The key demarcation between this new elite and the rest of society was not ownership but control of the means of production.
American sociologist C. Wright Mills took an institutional approach. In his landmark 1956 book The Power Elite, Mills argued that power in modern America was concentrated not in one group but in three interlocking institutional hierarchies: the corporate elite, the military elite, and the political directorate.
Whatever your definition of elites. The elites have a belief that they are the best ones to run things. And today they are using media to manipulate the populace to control or at least direct/herd them.
I sure there will be a significant push back on this post. Manipulation? Me? Bah horsepucky!