Distrust.........................

My story—I repeat— concerns the tectonic collision between a public which will not rule and institutions of authority progressively less able to do so.  My misgiving is that democracy will be ground to pieces under the stress.  An immense psychological distance separates the two sides, even as they come together in conflict.  This gulf is filled with dark matter:  distrust. . . .

What has changed, then is the public's distrust for authority—and its increased power,  in the age of the Fifth Wave, to translate that distrust into action. . . .

At some moment of 2011, the script went awry.  Toxic levels of distrust sickened democratic politics.  People began to mobilize for "real democracy," and denied that their elected representatives represented them.

-Martin Gurri,  The Revolt of the Public