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Even the most casual of observers will have recognized that social trust is at an all-time low.  Our faith in our political institutions has long been rocky at best, but we increasingly have no faith in any of our institutions—cultural, academic, social, religious, etc.  Beyond that noticeable decline in institutional trust, we’ve increasingly stopped trusting each other.

That erosion did not occur in a vacuum, nor is it surprising that as trusts in institutions—which are made up of people, after all—erodes, so does our trust in our fellow citizens.  The same people debasing our institutions are the same people failing to fulfill the duties of those institutions to protect and guide us.

Sure, the conservative will say, “I don’t need some intellectual telling me how to live my life,” and that’s true.  But that intellectual’s ideas and proposals are making your life much worse, whether you realize it or not.  In a time of high social cohesion and trust, that boogeyman intellectual would be making decisions or proposing policies that would help or support his fellow citizens, or at least would seek to do no harm to them.

A major hat-tip goes to the blog The Most Revolutionary Act, which reblogged an excellent piece from American Thinker entitled “The GOP is Losing the Vote Fraud War” by Steve McCann.  To quote liberally from McCann’s piece:

A Rasmussen poll taken in October of 2021 found that 56% of all likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  Another Rasmussen poll dated April of 2023 revealed that 60% of all likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcomes of many 2022 midterm elections.  Unsurprisingly in a Rasmussen poll published on June 14, 2023, 54% of all likely voters believe that cheating will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Those are shocking numbers; that a whopping 60% of all likely voters (not just Republicans) believed that cheating affected the midterm elections is massive.

I would number myself among those 60%.  But even if we’re all wrong, and the 2020 and 2022 elections were totally above board (and, come now, who can honestly say that with a straight face?), the fact that we believe rampant cheating is taking place is an indication of an extreme distrust of our political institutions.

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