Survey Proof

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Survey Proof

Guess what. Did you guess? If you said, “You saw a survey that said exactly whatever it was you already believed is true,” you were frighteningly accurate. You’re probably a mindreader. Not to mention precocious, wise, and otherwise good-looking.

Public opinion surveys say that most Americans—clear majorities—have had low-to-no confidence in their institutions ranging from the elected national offices to the Supreme Court, news media, public schools and universities, and seemingly everything in between—even the medical system, whatever that might conjure in a survey participant’s mind.

It seems to me that this accounts for why a significant part of the country does not seem especially bothered by the chaotic early weeks of the Trump administration’s tear-it-all-down actions.

If you don’t feel like government institutions are doing things well or appropriately, would you be willing to take to the streets to prevent harm and injury from happening to them?

By bias is that we can only agree on negative actions right now. Which is to say: nihilism. We can’t agree on what to build in the place of nothing. But most people feel like government does the wrong things in some form or fashion: too much of whatever it does, maybe for the wrong people, maybe for no obvious constructive purpose at all. So people feel like maybe it needs to be disassembled. Or someone needs to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on the keyboard to force a reboot.

Our long-standing and growing distrust in our government and in our leading public institutions has paved the way for this. No one has demonstrated any means for changing course. But tearing the institutions down with withering criticism appeals to popular passions. So everyone is watching and waiting to see where all this intentional derailment ends.

For institutions that enjoy public confidence ranging from the low single digits to the low 30s, it doesn’t seem likely there will be a big groundswell of public pressure to stop the demolition.