We Are Losing Trust in Political Institutions

How does it feel to lose trust in democracy? This video explores how we lose trust in democracy and public institutions. When I democratic decline, I often say that political trust is at an all time low since the European revolutions in 1848.

📌
00:00 Why trust in democracy matters
00:50 When citizens think institutions are broken or incompetent (1)
01:04 Accompanying emotion?
01:23 When citizens think institutions are captured or corrupt (2)
02:01 Accompanying emotion?
02:10 When citizens experience loss of citizen efficacy (3)
03:01 Accompanying emotion?
03:36 when citizens find institutions opaque (4)
04:29 Accompanying emotion?

✅ Watch me next to explore how populist discourse affects your democracy.

✅ Why commentators with large audiences often lose their way on YouTube and why the current state of social media is incompatible with democratic regeneration.

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#vladvexlershow offers a guide to surviving the 21st century. Surviving it politically, culturally, aesthetically, and coming away with a vision of the world that is at once truthful but also hopeful.

Vlad Vexler is a philosopher, musicologist & arts consultant. He is slowly writing a book on Isaiah Berlin. Born in Russia in 1981, his home has been Israel, Australia, Tonga and now London. Since 2003 he has lived with the neuro immune condition ME. For several years he was unable to walk or talk or read. His PhD research focused on political liberty.

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[VladVexler]

📌
00:00 Why trust in democracy matters
00:50 When citizens think institutions are broken or incompetent (1)
01:04 Accompanying emotion?
01:23 When citizens think institutions are captured or corrupt (2)
02:01 Accompanying emotion?
02:10 When citizens experience loss of citizen efficacy (3)
03:01 Accompanying emotion?
03:36 when citizens find institutions opaque (4)
04:29 Accompanying emotion?

✅Watch me next to explore how populist discourse affects your democracy.

✅ Why commentators with large audiences often lose their way on YouTube and why the current state of social media is incompatible with democratic regeneration.

[chrissiestevens]

I’ve been banging on for 2y that citizens have lost trust in governments, healthcare and economics. Thank you for dissecting the reasons why, it makes absolute sense

[joshuarosenblatt]

Found you through Dr Campbell. Glad I did!

[Anarcath]

And all the great points you made lead to alienation: a feeling of this invisibility and impotence. Some of us who are well read and uphold rationalism won't engage in magical thinking, but we WILL engage in other forms of escapism such as drugs and alcohol, which are crude ways of coping because there is nothing else out there. Finally, a profound sense of loneliness sets it like a thick fog taking away your eyesight and hindsight. Apocalypse need not come in a grandiose, cataclysmic one two punch, it can easily sip through and into our lives slowly until nothing is left.

[ulrichmasalin]

Absolut!
The interesting point is that I see this at any scale. As well as in USA, Europe, Germany, or the small city at the polar circle where I live. And I see it too inside institutions, in companies, in schools... churches...🤯🙈

[UnderTheGoldenGate]

I was a lobbyist. The dysfunction is shocking - it's worse than the average person thinks. In order to understand the average politician and lobbyist is to think of them like a lawyer that you hire. A lawyer will represent the interests of the person who hires them, the "truth", the "right thing" is TOTALLY irrelevant. The biggest problem I see is the lack of understanding and ENGAGEMENT by the average citizen in the real political process (vs. the garbage they feed us to distract us - and we fall for it)

[JoButterwick]

Fascinating! I see parallels here in the loss of trust and accompanying feelings that occur with the breakup of a marriage.

[ingridlinbohm]

Don't forget that being lied to is another cause of loss of trust. This also contributes to the feeling lost because we have lost our sence of where we are in the world. It like being blindfolded and put in a room filled with objects we cannot see so we think we are going to trip up.

[julietdallaire]

Just found you; subscribed immediately. You are brilliant! You are appreciated! It's like being in graduate school again (except fascinating, entertaining, and exciting at the same time, which is way better than graduate school). And you're so funny too. I am listening to you on my TV right now, imitating Trump talking about pasta. Lol. So funny and so smart too. Thank you, Vlad. Support & gratitude from Juliet in Canada 🍁

[begr_wiedererkennungswert]

You categorized this beautifully. Before I lost my brain to ME I had some insights into the hidden gears of political decision making the majority maybe doesn't have, but some suspect. I find myself in categories 2 and 3.

[jasonparker]

Dear Vlad, Your about to go super viral around the world. So Amazing Mind Blowing. ✌💜🌹⭐

[Humongous_Pig_Benis]

I'm here from Dr. John Campell's interview with you and you've gained yourself a subscriber! Thanks for this very concise information, it all makes sense.
Writing from Portugal, I relate about the last phase when the government started implementing laws and restrictions because of Covid that went against our Constitution, and the _specialists_ on the health meetings were just government appointed _friends_ because the real specialists knew none of those so called _specialists_ .
More than feeling lost and powerless I really felt our Democracy became opaque. That's how you create the _underground resistance_ not always backed up by Science, reason and evidence.

[Samsgarden]

Virtually the psychological pointers to an abusive upbringing.
despair, detachment, isolation marginalisation, insecurity..

[humanitarianly]

This sadly feels like it is happening. A dystopian state of living.

[YNomadicDusk]

WOW! I see all of these today where I am, which would explain the apathy.

[gemeinschaftsgeful]

Enter multinational corporations manipulating under the governmental surface, then the citizens feel inadequate and betrayed.

[wisedup]

Me too. Thanks, Dr John Campbell. This intelligent man has taught me a lot already.

[robertbrennan]

An illuminating and cogent analysis, thank you Vlad!

[shadesofgrey]

2 is how I feel about most institutions right now.

[thetooginator]

I think it’s important to add that when a citizen sees that many of her fellow citizens are selfish, ignorant, delusional, hateful and irrational, that ALSO erodes her confidence in democracy.