People just don’t trust their government.
People feel disconnected from their government.
And that lack of trust — encouraged deliberately by some and unintentionally by others — is eroding the foundation of democracy in America.
That was the message from some speakers at the recent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held annually at the University of Southern California.
And while solutions were harder to come by than diagnosis, it’s clear the erosion of trust in institutions — including and especially the media — is a big part of the problem.
In the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Donald Trump became the sole source of information that many of his followers would believe, said Jonathan Lemire, the MSNBC host and Politico writer. His denigrations of the press as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” — while not original — helped to erode already flagging confidence in the press.
As a result, many believed Trump when he said the 2016 election would be rigged (whoops) and the 2020 election was stolen (nope). The Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol were the culmination of that belief, said Steve Phillips, columnist and author of the book “How We Win the Civil War.”
When people feel alienated from power and believe that their votes don’t count and that the government isn’t responsive to their concerns, it’s fertile ground for conspiracy theories to grow, said Jared Yates Sexton, author of “The Midnight Kingdom.”
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